Wonder Women gazes through the lens of the fetishized, marginalized and unseen

I look at them and wonder if

They are a part of me

I look in their eyes and wonder if

They share my dreams*

Jeffrey Deitch Gallery

Wonder Women Exhibit on 18 Wooster Street, in Soho, NY

Wonder Women Entrance

List of participating artists presented by Kathy Huang

Wonder Women Section 1

From left to right then floor: Work by Sahana Ramakrishnan Shyama Golden, Livie Yin, Susan Chen, Anna Park, & Bhasha Chakrabarti.

If you haven’t experienced the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery exhibition on 18 Wooster Street, this weekend is your last chance to marvel at  Wonder Women.

Curated by the Deitch Gallery’s Managing Director Kathy Huang, she presents thirty Asian American and diasporic women and non-binary artists' work representing their interpretation of wonder, self, and identity through figuration.

Artwork by Zoé Blue M.

Mother, Flower, Secret of the Flesh by Sahana Ramakrishnan

2022

After You, by Anna Park

2022, charcoal on paper on panel

After the Rains by Shyama Golden

2022, oil on canvas. From her series, Yakkas: Everyday Exorcisms. The painting features “Sri Lankan folk dancers masked as Yakkas (devils or demons) who traditionally perform in colorful and often comedic exorcism rituals to remove unseen spirits causing physical and mental ailments. In mundane American scenes from my own life, the Yakkas go about their daily lives and occasionally interact with people. The all-night ritual of Thovil (which could be described as a roast disguised as a ceremony in honor of the Yakkas) has more relevance today as tourist spectacle than for its intended purpose as an occult healing ritual, but I'm interested in the purpose they once served for communities who embraced them since pre-Buddhist times on the island. The original symbolism of the Yakkas is also used in scenes where I combine self portraiture with Yakkas who act out my own inner conflicts.” - from her website

Chinatown Block Watch, by Susan Chen

2022, oil on canvas. “Featuring 11 members of Chinatown Block Watch, the painting depicts a group of ​local ​volunteers ​​walking through Chinatown during the pandemic. The scene is set against backdrops of local shops and signages like​ Nom Wah Tea Parlour,​ Lin Sister​ Herb​s​, a Pell Street hair salon, Mee Sum Cafe, Mott Street Foot Rub, where the artist seeks to pay homage to certain Chinatown streets​ and shops that have survived since the 1900s,​ despite Chinatowns (across the country) having been burned down a couple of times throughout history due to prejudice. This acknowledgment of history is further nodded at by the fire hydrant in the painting. A street graffiti that reads "Stop Chinatown Jail" and the artist's notebook questioning, "Are Prisons Obsolete?" references the 2003 publication of the same title by Angela Y. Davis, and follows the artist's own questioning of the role of prisons as potentially outdated systems in present times. Simultaneously, the artist found influence from on-the-ground protests ​that ​were taking place as ​the city's building construction plans began for the world's tallest mega jail in Manhattan's Chinatown.” - via Susan Chen’s Instagram

Huang’s curation and intentional themes are timely: “The increasing violence against Asian Americans, particularly against Asian women and the elderly, emphasizes the need to tell our own stories. Figuration allows the artists to present themselves, their communities, and their histories on their own terms.”

Wonder Women, inspired by Genny Lim’s similarly named poem Wonder Woman, observed the lives of Asian women across generations, countries, and socioeconomic backgrounds. These themes are evident throughout the exhibit, centering Asian/diasporic/nonbinary/women as its protagonists and contemplating how these pieces are similar yet distinctive.

Mamito's Apparition, by Bambou Gili

2022, Oil on Linen. Gili’s painting is a reference to a photograph of her grandmother, Mamito, taken in her place of birth Huế. Growing up in New York, Gili’s relationship to nature was almost entirely through art, whether that was from Félix Valloton’s “Sunset” series or the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Combining these inspirations, Gili’s painting becomes a surreal portrait where nature and her grandmother are equally unique in their aliveness. - via Jeffrey Deitch Gallery Instagram

Four Sisters by Amanda Ba

Four Sisters depicts four women, presumably strippers, seated around a table. Although one may interpret this scene as taking place in the back room of a nightclub, the painting's title alludes to a forged kinship, and the presence of the shared watermelon emphasizes a sense of familial relation. The painting also probes at fetishization, performative femininity, queer endurance by the way of found families, while the red dog under the table alludes to Ba’s prior work concerning the topic of animacy and post-humanism” - Jeffrey Deitch Gallery Instagram

Smells like Pre-Teen Spirit, by Melissa Joseph

2022, needle felted wool and sari silk on industrial felt.

Celestial Women Swim in Gold, by Chelsea Ryoko Wong

"…celestial (sic) was once used as a derogatory term for Chinese people. The artist instead found the word to be beautiful and reclaimed it to think about how Asian women relate to this idea of being from the sky or belonging to heaven…And lastly, because Chinese women ARE gold”. - the artist via Jeffrey Deitch Gallery Instagram

Grandmother, by Zadie Xa

2022, Handsewn and machine-stiched mix fabrics, bleach and dyed denim, shell buttons, and dried flowers. “I wanted to create an homage to all immigrant women. I see this piece as a reflection of many women I have come across in my life and childhood” - Zadie Xa, via Jeffrey Deitch Gallery Instagram

Each work of art is unique, varying in texture, medium (whether oil, wool, silk, charcoal), size, shape, point of view, tension, and detail, with none like the other. They’re all vastly singular in intensity (whether powerful or introspective) yet similarly aligned. Like in the poem Wonder Woman, #gennylim recalls how someone’s socioeconomic status can affect their body.

While facets of life can separate even the most akin, we are all undeniably connected by one thing: the body. 

(Ching Shih) Piracy, by Dominique Fung

Ching Shi who inspired this piece was a Chinese pirate leader of the South China Sea. Among her many accomplishments, she has been described as not only history's most successful female pirate but the most successful pirate in history

Slumber, by Sally J. Han

2022, acrylic paints on paper mounted on wood panel.

By What Love Have I, by Catalina Ouyang

2020, abandoned char, horse tibia, steel, plaster, carpet, traditional Chinese sleeping medicine, pigment, horse hair, glue, water, and cigarette butts accumulate from 12/2019 to 02/2020.

Artwork by Nadia Waheed

Milk Dream, by Mai Ta

(on the floor) Brown Jouissance on a Carpet from Sultanabad in the Yale Center for British Arts, by Bhasha Chakrabarti

In her work, Chakrabarti is explicitly inserting her brown femme body in ecstasy into a sterile institutional space where the carpet stands in for the empire and colonial grandeur. The term “Brown Jouissance” is coined in Amber Jamilla Musser’s book “Sensual Excess Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance.” - which captures the radical potential for selfhood and pleasures of enfleshment that exceed the constraints of sovereignty, subjectivity, and legibility in the context of white, patriarchal, and hegemonic structures of domination. - via Jeffrey Deitch Gallery Instagram

Hurry to experience this one-of-a-kind exhibition of extraordinary pieces, including; the nostalgic “Smells like Pre-teen Spirit” by Melissa Joseph, the fixed stare of Jiab Prachakul's self-portrait “Purpose”, the repossessive “Brown Jouissance on a Carpet from Sultanabad in the Yale Center for British Arts” by Bhasha Chakrabarti, the musical “Walking the Timeline” by Chitra Ganesh, the hypnotically saturated “Mamito’s Apparition” by Bambou Gili, and defiantly celebratory “Celestial Women Swim in Gold” by Chelsea Ryoko Wong.  

Purpose, by Jiab Prachakul

2022, the artist centers herself in a daring self-portrait, depicting how she sees herself compared to how others see her.

Colonnade (Chinoiserie), by Milano Chow

2022, Colonnade is part of Chow’s solo exhibition Prima Facie. “Handsome, entrancing, and ghostly, Chow’s exquisite monochromatic collages are rendered in graphite, ink, and photo transfer, casting modish women in self-possessed cameos staged in gilded architectural interiors that feel cloistered and deserted. Influenced by Surrealism, fashion photography, shop window design, and Hollywood film noir from Chow’s native Los Angeles, her ornamented mise-en-scènes are frozen in time and loaded with disquieting effects.” - via The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Napping, by Tidawhitney Lek

2022, Acrylic, pastel, and oil on canvas. “Woder Women is a beautiful survey of Asian American female painters, all unique and important to the contribution of history. These voices are so necessary and to be able to join a dialogue of this scale demonstrates greatly that all identities matter. I think everybody has a story worth telling and it’s important to be seen and heard, it’s what helps propel a progressive dialogue forward” - Tidawhitney Lek via the Here and There Collective Instagram

Second Floor of the Wonder Women Exhbition

Other artists participating in Wonder Women are Joeun Kim Aatchim, Amanda Ba, Susan Chen, Milano Chow, Dominique Fung, Shyama Golden, Sasha Gordon, Sally J. Han, Jeanne Jalandoni, Tidawhitney Lek, Zoé Blue M., Tammy Nguyen, Catalina Ouyang, Maia Cruz Palileo, Anna Park, GaHee Park, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Anjuli Rathod, Hiba Schahbaz, Mai Ta, Nadia Waheed, Lily Wong, Zadie Xa & Livien Yin.

*excerpt from Genny Lim’s Wonder Woman, 1981, read the entire poem below.

Wonder Woman

by Genny Lim

Sometimes I see reflections on bits of glass on sidewalks

I catch the glimmer of empty bottles floating out to sea

Sometimes I stretch my arms way above my head and wonder if

There are women along the Mekong doing the same

Sometimes I stare longingly at women who I will never know

Generous, laughing women with wrinkled cheeks and white teeth

Dragging along chubby, rosy-cheeked babies on fat, wobbly legs

sometimes I stare at Chinese grandmothers

Getting on the 30 Stockton with shipping bags

Japanese women tourists in European hats

Middle-aged mothers with laundry carts

Young wives holding hands with their husbands

lesbian women holding hands in coffee-houses

Smiling debutantes with bouquets of yellow daffodils

Silver-haired matrons with silver rhinestoned poodles

Painted prostitutes posing along MacArthur boulevard

Giddy teenage girls snapping gum in fast cars

Widows clutching bibles, crucifixes

I look at them and wonder if

They are a part of me

I look in their eyes and wonder if

They share my dreams

I wonder if the woman in mink is content

If the stockbroker’s wife is afraid of growing old

If the professor’s wife is an alcoholic

If the woman in prison is me

There are copper-tanned women in Hyannis port playing tennis

Women who eat with finger bowls

There are women in factories punching time clocks

Women tired every waking hour of the day

I wonder why there are women born with silver-spoons in their mouths

women who have never known a day of hunger

Women who have never changed their own bed linens

And I wonder why there are women who must work

Women who must clean other women’s houses

Women who must shell shrimps for pennies a day

Women who must sew other women’s clothes

Who must cook

Who must die

In childbirth

In dreams

Why must women stand divided?

Building the walls that tear them down?

Jill-of-all-trades

Lover, mother, housewife, friend, breadwinner

Heart and spade

A woman is a ritual

A house that must accommodate

A house that must endure

Generation after generation

Of wind and torment, of fire and rain

A house with echoing rooms

Closets with hidden cries

Walls with stretchmarks

Windows with eyes

Short, tall, skinny, fat

Pregnant, married, white, yellow, black, brown, red

Professional, working-class, aristocrat

Women cooking over coals in sampans

Women shining tiffany spoons in glass houses

Women stretching their arms way above the clouds

In Samarkand, in San Francisco

Along the Mekong