6 November – 30 November 2024
Opening 6 November at 6pm
Live performance 16 November from 6.30 – 7pm

Deliciously Authentic
Li-Ming Hu

When I was showing art in NZ before I went to grad school, the word race was never mentioned, nor foregrounded in my art. In the US, it was dropped in my first class crit and kept buzzing around ready to bite me in the ass if I fucked up. In the many open call/residency and grant applications that followed, it seemed increasingly expedient to drop the terms ‘Asian’, ‘diaspora’ and’ ‘subjectivity’ in the make believe projects for those applications. As often happens, the make-believe leaks into the actual, and here are some of the results.

When I was showing art in NZ, I never mentioned my 3 year stint on Shortland Street or the one series I spent as a Power Ranger. While my teachers were quick to make links with my ‘background’ I was slower on the uptake, worried perhaps, that this association with the murky world of b-grade entertainment might tarnish any art world credibility I might develop. In the US however, people thought this was REALLY COOL and perhaps the most interesting thing about me. No surprise then, that I turned to this experience with scripts, set and cameras as ‘a useful methodology with which to explore ideas and practices of performance while being in dialogue with a history of performance art that has often taken pains to distance itself from the theater and ideas of the spectacle that the entertainment industry embodies’¹.

¹From an application essay for a program for which I was not accepted.

Image 1. Still from Deep within her almond eyes, 2024. Single channel video, 5:26 minutes

Image 2. Sweet Thai Chilli, 2024. Glazed porcelain, dimensions variable.