This performance is in Chinese only.
Hosted by Free Chinese Feminists

医生说它像隧道，是每个人来到这世界前的必经之路；画家说它像花朵，是黑暗中盛开的美。

然而大多数时候，它躲在耻感中沉默——即便存在于地球上半数人体内，却是“文明社会”的违禁词，似乎只能在生理课本中才能被正大光明地讨论。

阴道，它坚韧又脆弱；让我们受苦，也供我们享乐。

它是那么生动的，只属于女人的触角——阴道的形形色色的主人们通过形形色色的它，建立与世界的一部分连接。

有的快乐，有的心酸，有的愤怒、有的无奈。

但是，这些故事却不为人知。

当它不为繁衍人类、不被作者描绘、不只取悦他人，当它仅仅作为真切存在于女人身体里的、血肉筑成的的器官，阴道的故事是什么？
也许，我们应该听听阴道的主人怎么说。

今年10月19和20日晚上8点，纽约女权小组即将在纽约的一家剧院里，把属于中国妇女的关于阴道的故事大声说给全世界听。

今夜，阴道会说话，今夜，我们不害羞。希望在不远的将来，所有女人都能不再害羞，勇于说出自己和阴道的故事。

受美国戏剧《阴道独白》启发，北京女权小组BCome创作了中文独立话剧《阴道之道》。这剧从女权主义的角度，讲述不同背景的中国女性的生命故事，探索关于妇女性自主权的问题，反对针对性别的暴力。这部剧从2013年起在中国多个城市上演，深受欢迎，一票难求。

我们将这一部剧搬到纽约上演，根据在纽约的中国女性的经历对剧本进行了改编和重新创作，希望纽约的中文社区能从新的角度观察和思考中国妇女面对的问题。

该剧一共分为九幕短剧

- 引子 -
- 月经 -
- 初夜 -
- 性侵害 -
- 婊 -
- 自慰课堂 -
- 呻吟 -
- 性工作者 -
- 性别暴力口述史 -

我们邀请你 来聆听阴道想说的故事

时间
10月19日
10月20日
8-10pm

地点
Access Theatre
380 Broadway
NY 10013

报名购票

For information in English, please visit the Facebook page for the performance.

World Premiere

October 17, 18, & 19 at 7:30PM
Purchase Tickets here.

By Association is a chain curatorial platform for artists to collectively experiment with the practice of associative thinking. Across three nights of song, dance, the romantic comedy genre, and poetic performance, Ricky (YATTA), Hazel Katz and Rebecca Nieto address the interior and social worlds of depression and psychosis.

 Mental illness is inherently social. Across three nights of song, dance, the romantic comedy genre, and poetic performance, Ricky (YATTA), Hazel Katz and Rebecca Nieto address the interior and social worlds of depression and psychosis.

 “Who do we become after rebuilding our psyches again and again?” is Ricky’s injunction to 2019’s By Association performance collaboration. The question is importantly open-ended, and undergirds three nights of performances that address depression, psychosis, and the world of mental illness. In their songs, poetry, and dance, Ricky explores “mental illness” and psychological “splitting” as an ongoing reaction to oppressive environments. Hazel Katz will screen a scene from a feature film in progress, a romantic comedy about the precariousness of an intimate relationship of two people with mental illness. The scene will include a live score composed by Ricky and dialogue written by Rebecca Nieto. The movie asks whether suicide is a human right and what type of care work is possible between two sick people. Rebecca Nieto will perform from a visual poetic project entitled “Like A System, Meaning Itself”, which elevates language, metaphor, and the archive of “stigma” to examine sociality when we feel most isolated, the occult and utopic practices of vitality that resist the regulatory systems that reward “wellness” and punish neurodivergence.

Thu, Oct 17-18-19-20, 2019 (Opening Day Thu, Oct 17)

Friday, Saturday & Sunday, 11am - 6pm

Thursday, 11am - 9pm*

Gathering: Collecting and Documenting Chinese American History tells the origin story of historical societies, museums, and organized projects that document and make public the history of Chinese throughout America.

Exhibit runs through March 22, 2020
More information here.

Open Friday – Sunday, noon – 6 pm, & by appointment info@sleepcenterny.org

SLEEPCENTER is pleased to present Wuhan Club, Juchuan Li’s first and solo exhibition in the United States, as a part of the Under the Stones: Cultural Tactics of Place-making research exhibition series.

Wuhan Club is based on the metropolis the artist resides, an old city young in capitalism, embracing unprecedented speed of urban development – as the official slogan has it, “Wuhan, Different Everyday!” Self-identified as “an architect who doesn’t build houses,” using space as the primary method and medium, and against the aggressive infrastructural expansion and housing privatization, Li constructs.

Yet unlike other provincial clubs in Chinatown, Wuhan Club does not celebrate regional identity. Instead it probes the physical, the symbolic, and the sociological conditions of communal identity. Li often combines the capacity of images to remind us of the mediated present, and the capacity of spaces to summon mediated memories of the past and imaginaries of the future. The exhibition centers on two urban spaces of images: a real estate agency from the present and a video hall (录像厅) from the 1980-90s. In the former, everything other than the price can be manipulated through representation, as housing units are often sold before the completion of construction; and in the latter, imaginations of the outside world were sustained by uneven media literacy and idiosyncratic spectatorship. Finally, Li’s works from the 1990s to the recent decade map how we have migrated from bodies in spaces to refugees in images, as he practices intimacy, in solitude and with collectives, and sometimes with a brick – to contrive a measurer, a building block, or a weapon.

Juchuan Li (Shashi, 1964) is an associate professor at Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. He graduated from Wuhan Institute of Urban Construction (now Huazhong University of Science and Technology), and had taught at Wuhan University of Technology and Nanjing University. Since the 1990s, Li’s architectural practices have involved various mediums including performance, video, photography, site-specific installation, as well as writing, teaching and curating. He was the founding editor of the independent journal Architecture Bulletin in 2001. Against a real estate developer encroaching public land, he initiated the activist art project “Everyone’s East Lake” with Li Yu in 2010.

Selected group exhibitions Li participated include: Demonstration of Video Art ’97 China (the Central Academy of Art, 1997); The 1st Liang Sicheng Architecture Biennale (National Art Museum of China, 2001); Unspeakable Happiness: A Selection of Contemporary Art from China (Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, 2005); Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (Shenzhen, 2005); China Contemporary, Architecture, Art and Visual Culture (Netherlands Architecture Institute, 2006); Moving Image in China: 1988-2011 (Mingshen Art Museum, 2011); The Second Yinchuan Biennale (Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, 2018).

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Under the Stones: Cultural Tactics of Place-making Research Exhibition Series

In the last decade, small-scale, spontaneously formed and artistically informed alternative urban spaces have been breaking simultaneously through different cities in East Asia, and particularly in China. Unlike previous social movements, people gathering at these spaces are not that interested in macro social changes. Instead, they focus on creating new forms of life on a local communal scale, opening up the broad spectrum existing between the squashing of social awareness and heroic acts of dissidence. They also have reconfigured ideas of the public, community and collective, as the information about these physical spaces mostly circulates on digital platforms and within decentered and interpersonal networks.

Research exhibition series Under the Stones is devoted to the changing meanings and aims assigned to the concept of space, and to the spatial practices of artists who participate in but are not defined by collectives (集体). Departing from an examination of the interdependencies between the political and aesthetic strategies of social practice, this series further reflects the friction as well as the affinity between individuals and their collectives, and between the ever-morphing collectives and actual/virtual places. Under the Stone foregrounds the tension between art forms rather than their autonomies, approaching mediums as interventions in the visual, acoustic and linguistic infrastructures of our habitat. The series does not suggest any model for change. Only the clusters of organisms through their practical experimentation will determine when and how the possible becomes real.

In A Thousand Plateau, Deleuze and Guattari maintains that, in contrast to chess – the game of the state in which each piece is ranked with a fixed identity – Go (围棋) is the nonsubjectified assemblage of not intrinsic but situational properties: “it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival.” A terminology of Go, “under the stones” (倒脱靴 in Chinese; or ishi-no-shita in Japanese) refers to the moves in a space that just becomes free because some of your own stones are captured. Such dynamics between territorializing and deterritorializing is further staged in the show – situated not in the north-south problems of development, nor the east-west divide of culture.

Starting from fall 2019, research exhibition series Under the Stones: Cultural Tactics of Place-making is expected to expand over 6 exhibitions, alongside with numerous of events, workshops across various form of practices.

SLEEPCENTER荣幸为您呈现，李巨川在美国的首次个展“武汉会馆”。“武汉会馆” 是Under the Stones: Cultural Tactics of Place-making 研究型展览系列的一部分。

古城武汉的资本主义历史并不长，但却迎来了空前的城市发展速率，一如官方口号所说：“武汉，每天不一样！” 李巨川自认是一位“不造房子的建筑师”，他以空间作为创作的主要方法与媒介，抵抗激烈的房产私有化与基础设施扩张。

然而，与唐人街常见的同乡会、会馆不同，“武汉会馆”并不歌颂对区域性的集体认同，或作为武汉人的自我意识，而是探索形成共同体和自我意识所必要的物质性、象征性和社会性条件。李巨川提醒我们图像如何承载现在，同时利用空间召唤经过调解的对过去的记忆和对未来对想象。此次展览的核心是出现在城市里的两个关于图像的空间：存在于当下的房产中介，和出现于八九十年代的录像厅。在前者的空间里，几乎所有可见内容都隶属于再现的范畴，除了房价；在后者的空间里，不平衡的媒介听读能力和特殊的观看行为支撑着人们对外部世界的想象。最后，李巨川从九十年代至今的作品从侧面描绘了空间中的身体如何迁移成为图像中的流亡者。他的实践常常把控着一种亲密性，有时独自一人，有时在群体中，有时和一块砖头在一起——他似乎要发明一种衡量尺度，一种建造单位，或者一种新的武器。

李巨川 1964年生于湖北沙市，现任教于湖北美术学院。他毕业于武汉城市建设学院(现华中科技大学)，曾任教于武汉理工大学与南京大学。1990年代起，李巨川以行为、录像、照片、场地装置等形式进行建筑实践，同时进行相关的写作、演讲、教学与展览。2001 年编辑非正式出版物《建筑学简报》。2010年，与武汉艺术家共同发起抗议某地产商在武汉东湖地区进行商业开发的“每个人的东湖”艺术计划。

他参加的主要展览包括: ’97中国录像艺术观摩(中央美术学院画廊, 1997); 首届梁思成建筑双年展(中国美术馆, 2001); 难以言喻的快乐:中国当代艺术展(墨西哥塔马约当代艺术博物馆, 2005); 首届深圳城市\建筑双年展(深圳, 2005); 中国当代:建筑, 艺术与视觉文化(荷兰建筑学会, 2006); 中国当代艺术三十年之: 中国影像艺术 1988-2011(民生现代美术馆, 2011); 银川双年展(银川当代美术馆, 2018)。 

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关于 Under the Stones: Cultural Tactics of Place-making 研究型展览系列

近十几年来，在泛东亚的城市中，自发型的小规模另类/替代性空间不约而同地兴起，在中国尤其突出。与先前的社会活动有所不同的是，聚集在这些空间中的人们并不着眼于宏观层面的社会变化， 而是致力于在局部或社区层面创造新的生命形式，并在“彻底抹除社会意识”和“英雄式的反抗”这两种极端之间打开一个广阔的光谱。这些空间的相关信息，主要在数字平台与去中心化的社交网络中传播，它们的出现也正在改写我们关于公众、群落以及共同体的认知。

本研究型系列展览所关心的是，“空间” 这一概念所携带的不断变化着的内涵与目的，以及一些参与 “集体” 但其作品无法被 “集体” 定义的艺术家的空间性实践。本系列考察社会实践中，政治与美学策略之间的相互依存关系。并以之为出发点，进一步呈现个体与其所在集体之间的摩擦与联结，以及在持续变化中的共同体与真实/虚拟空间的相互作用。展览着重阐述不同艺术形式之间的紧张关系，而不是它们的自主性，并将各种媒介理解为人们栖居其中的视觉、声音和语言基础设施。本系列并不试图提出某种可实现改变的模型。唯有有机生命的星丛，通过自身实际的社会实验，决定何时以及如何让可能性成为现实。

德勒兹和加塔利在《千高原》中指出，象棋的每一个棋子都有其固定的等级和身份，而围棋则是由具体形势而非个体的固有性质决定的去主体化的集合:“这是关于在开放的空间中排列自身、占据空 间、并维持一种随时涌现的可能性的问题：运动并不是从一个点到另一个点，而是持续性的、既无目标也无目的地、既无出发也无到达。” Under the Stones (译为:脱骨、倒脱靴) 一词原为围棋术语，意指在本方棋子在被对方所吃后释放出的空间里进行的活动。在南北经济和东西文化两种差异之外，展览将进一步展开领土化与去领土化之间的对弈。

Under the Stones: Cultural Tactics of Place-making 研究型展览系列自2019年秋季展开，拟由6个展览，及数个相关的研究项目，放映，座谈和发生等形式组成。

Installation is an open-ended collection of installation works presented alongside performance work in jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham’s Let ‘im Move You series. The works are a combination of media including video projection, audio, and sculpture that consider strategic essentialism and code switching as defense mechanisms and means of survival.

ABOUT
Let ‘im Move You is a series of artistic works that reflects a 10-year artistic collaboration between jumatatu m. poe and Jermone “Donte” Beacham. This body of work was initiated by jumatatu’s interest in Jermone’s approach to J-Sette, which is a call-and-response dance form that developed in early 1980’s by women’s majorette teams at historically Black colleges in the United States. Leagues of Black Queer men, prohibited from trying out as majorettes, have since formed competitive J-Sette teams in gay clubs and pride parades across the country. At Abrons Arts Center, jumatatu and Jermone present four components of the Let ‘im Move You series: Intervention (October 9); This Is a Formation (October 10-12); Installation (October 10-13); and Queer Slow Jam Party (October 12). (Dance, October  9-13, 2019).

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In the Abrons Arts Center Experimental Theater

Let ’im Move You:
This Is a Formation

World Premiere
Saturday, October 12, 2019 at 7:00PM

This Is a Formation is the latest dance performance project in jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham’s Let ‘im Move You series, a collection of performance and visual works centered around the artists’ explorations with the J-Sette form. Formation brings together 7 Black dancers, a DJ, and a lighting designer as performers for the work. Audiences travel within the performance space with relative freedom, sharing the same spaces as performers. Live captured video design elements will focus on close-up capture of the performers for display on hanging panels throughout the space, referencing both hyper-surveillance of Black people’s bodies, and pop-star scale megalomania.

more information here

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In the Abrons Arts Center Playhouse Theater

Joshua Gelb and Nehemiah Luckett
jazz singer

World Premiere
Saturday, October 12, 2019 at 8:00PM

jazz singer is a theatrical exhumation of the first feature-length “sound film” The Jazz Singer, reinterpreted by Joshua William Gelb and Nehemiah Luckett.  Set on the Lower East Side, the 1927 film tells the story of a “jazz crooner” forced to choose between his immigrant Jewish heritage and his aspirations to become a Broadway star. Though the film is historically significant for its integration of synchronized sound, it is also remembered for its controversial use of blackface. Gelb and Luckett’s musical rendering offers a contemporary take on a distinctly U.S. American story, one that interrogates appropriation, assimilation, atonement, and whether escape from the specter of blackface is possible.

More information here.

Tickets for all performances available here

Hosted by Free Chinese Feminists

11am-7pm weekdays, 11am-9pm weekends

It was not until New Year’s Day of 2018, when Luo Xixi, a PhD graduate from Beihang University broke the silence. She accused her professor of sexual harassment 12 years ago. She suffered insomnia, auditory hallucination and depression since then. But she said, we cannot let darkness and powerlessness spread and hurt more people.

The curtain of Chinese anti-sexual harassment movement eventually revealed, it is not only an active response to the U.S. leading global #MeToo movement, but also a response to local culture and legislation based on the cumulating momentum gathered from previously long-term debate on women's power.

When darkness is torn, a small light comes in. Those who once lost their voices begin to gain the power of telling, even if those stories and words are continuously censored. Starting from Luo Xixi, numerous stories have exposed prevalent but hidden crimes. Among all the offenses, sexual violence is the kind that is most shameful and most disbelieved and is most difficult to get justice for.

Fortunately, the stories link people together, and our similar experiences warm each other. One shout of “Me Too”, creates thousands of echoes. We are not isolated.

Begun from July 2019, exhibition of #MeToo in China were held in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Chengdu consecutively, but has been forced to stop again and again, because the exhibition itself is part of speak up and protest, and they are not static records but an empowerment to the ongoing movement.   

Today, the exhibition is coming to New York, where it can freely breathe and speak. It is also a great transnational connection that shows the vivid power of Chinese feminists and their power to make changes.

Recovering from all the loss, shame and misgivings they’ve been through, those who were once voiceless come together and speak out. By telling stories, they empower themselves, build up strength and educate the public.

This exhibition demonstrates the long-struggling journey of all the survivors. There are personal belongings that have borne witness to moments of shame or defeat, diaries that recorded pain, and videos that document past struggles. Over 350 letters showcase perseverance, as well as all the legal documents used to fight for justice.

Please come and join us. Let us meet up here in New York to hear from each other, make progress and pass the # MeToo spirit on.

Exhibition Facebook Page

Found in Translation, a selection of paintings and drawings from Eleen Lin's current body of work exploring themes of cultural hybrids and diasporas, memory, sexuality, and the inadequacies of translations between cultures and eras.

Inspired by Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and mistranslations in the Mandarin version of the novel, Lin's stunning and often playful imagery hooks the viewer, taking them into complex contemporary worlds a dream’s width away from our own.

The images within the works are developed over many iterations via the source texts' links to current social/political issues; processes involving free association, wordplay, and slang; research of whaling and whale-related mythologies; and Lin's personal experiences as an immigrant artist.

Lin works with a mix of acrylic and oil medium on canvas. After staining raw canvas with acrylic to create a watercolor and Chinese ink painting-like backdrop, clear gesso and layers of transparent and opaque oil paints are applied to break into the fluidity of the background, giving it a collage-like effect. This effect simulates experiences of a digital world where multiple representations and images exist simultaneously or in rapid succession. However, Lin also leaves parts of the canvas raw, providing the viewer with a tether to the physically of the painting, and echos of maritime aesthetics (specifically sailcloth).

These physical and imagistic layers allow the viewer to become an audience discovering narratives within the paintings instead of simply being a spectator - even if they are not familiar with Moby-Dick. For those audience members who are familiar with the novel, multilingual, or have other connections to an Asian culture, there are many additional depths to discover.

Open: Monday - Friday, 1 to 6pm. Saturday & Sunday by appointment only 212-431-9740 www.caacarts.com

456畫廊很榮幸的展出藝術家林怡伶個展 Found譯。這是林怡伶近期一系列油畫跟繪畫的創作， 她的作品採用當代跨文化語境中的視覺符號，重新闡述美國經典文學作品白鯨記的故事內容，描繪了一種在不同的傳統之間漂流，孤獨遊牧般的經歷，並且挑戰了文化界線與當代環境的相關性。這些重構不只包含當代社會新的表象和意義，探索了不同文化和世代翻譯的不足之處，也表達了移民社群，記憶和性的思維。

經由Herman Melville Moby-Dick(白鯨記)的啟發，以及中文小說版翻譯的隔閡與限制，藝術家使用令人驚奇和趣味性十足的圖像抓住觀眾的目光，將他們的視角帶入多元化的當代繪畫世界，拓展了觀眾自我的想像空間。

作品中的圖像是連結當前社會與政治的問題，經由各種不同文本翻譯而創造出來的, 其中涉及自由聯想，文字遊戲，地方俚語，捕鯨以及鯨魚相關的神話傳說;加上藝術家本人身為移民藝術家的個人經歷的總合想法。

藝術家在畫布上巧妙使用了壓克力和油彩。首先使用壓克力暈染畫布，勾畫出水彩和中國水墨畫般的背景後。 應用透明和厚實的油彩,分離背景彩墨的流動性, 展現出拼貼般的效果，這種連續堆疊多重影像集合在電腦螢幕上的視覺印象，模擬了數位世界的體驗 。然而，藝術家也留下了部分粗棉畫布為呼應航海相關的連結-特別是帆布。

這一些真實與想像融合而成的影像，會讓不熟悉白鯨記故事情節的觀眾在觀看畫作中很快融入繪畫般敘述性的意涵而不僅僅只是一個旁觀者而已 。至於那些熟悉這本美國經典文學，有著多語言能力或與擁有亞洲文化背景的觀賞者來說，將會有身歷其境般深刻的啟示。

關於藝術家：

林怡伶出生於台灣台北市，在泰國求學成長， 2008年畢業於美國耶魯大學（Yale University School of Art)獲得油畫和版畫系藝術碩士, 2005年在倫敦大學斯萊德（Slade School of Fine Art)學院取得油畫系藝術學士。她的作品曾在各大美術館展出，包含紐約布朗克斯美術館 (2015); 紐約皇后美術館(2012); 中國廣東美術館 (2007); 韓國光州藝術美術館 (2007)。她也曾在多個國家辦過個展。展場包括維州Craddock-Terry藝廊 (2016); 肯州Doris Ulmann 藝廊 (2015); 紐約Garrison藝術中心 (2014)。 此外她的作品也曾多次在全世界多個畫廊巡迴展出，現今更有眾多美術館機構收藏她的作品。

林怡伶曾經獲得Elizabeth Canfield Hicks獎 ，並參加了NYFA移民藝術家計劃，Fountainhead residency住村計劃 , Racho Linda Vista 住村計劃 ，以及紐約布朗克斯美術館的AIM計劃。她也是常玉獎學金的獲獎者。

林怡伶現居住和工作於紐約。

Curated by renowned cartoonists Amy Hwang and Jeremy Nguyen, this exhibition features the works of 10 talented cartoonists of Asian descent, including Monroe Leung, considered one of the earliest Asian American cartoonists to be published in The New Yorker with his piece from 1949.

Proudly featuring published and original works by:

Alice Cheng, Maddie Dai, Amy Hwang, Suerynn Lee, Monroe Leung, Evan Lian, Hartley Lin, Christine Mi, Jeremy Nguyen, Colin Tom

The exhibition runs from Oct. 4, 2019 through Jan. 12, 2020. Open every day, 10 a.m. to 7:20 p.m. Join us for the opening reception on Friday, Oct. 11, from 5 to 8 p.m. Free and open to the public.