Neither Black / Red / Yellow Nor Woman

Neither Black / Red / Yellow Nor Woman was inspired by Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism written in 1989, in which she proposed the empowerment of literary writing and storytelling against partaking “in the Euro-American system of dualistic reasoning and its age-old divide-and-conquer tactics.” The conceptual departure is informed by works and archives of three Asian women artists: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982), Pan Yuliang (1895–1977), and Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952). By composing an imaginary encounter between Yuliang, Theresa, and Minh-ha in Paris sometime in 1979, the stories of women who search for their voices and struggle with their identity-impasse surface from the postcolonial reality overshadowed by the ideological filter and division of the Cold War. The transnational journeys of various female protagonists in the exhibition challenge the identitarian politics and the antagonistic dichotomy that haunts our relationship with the past, present, and future. We envision the exhibition as a conversation that merges “them” with “us,” to speak in proximity with one another, and to form polyphony of cross border storytellers.

Artists featured in this exhibition respond to our questions with their own choices of conceptual personae, juxtapose historical materials with fictional constructs, and speculate beyond the categorization of gender and culture. They are Chang Wen-Hsuan, Dachal Choi, Chitra Ganesh, Jane Jin Kaisen, Iris Kensmil, Sylbee Kim, Mai Ling, Laura Huertas Millán, Sara Modiano, Mai-Thu Perret, Thao Nguyen Phan, Arin Rungjang, Shen Xin, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Wang Zhibo, Luka Yuanyuan Yang & Carlo Nasisse, Mia Yu.

Neither Black/Red/Yellow Nor Woman is co-curated by Nikita Yinqqian Cai and Xiaoyu Weng and is the first act in a trilogy that will unfold with multiple chapters in different institutions and geographies.

Accompanying the opening of the exhibition, the 8th Para-curatorial Symposium Floating Constellation: Border Crossing Exchanges Within and Beyond Asia presents historical and speculative perspectives on a network of cultural diplomats, thinkers, and artists that shifted the national borders in Asia that were constructed around and after the World War II. We have invited Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu, Yongwoo Lee, Pan Lu, Seng Yu Jin, Shen Xin, Ming Tiampo, Abhijan Toto, Chương-Đài Võ, Emily Wilcox, and Ling Zhang to unfold their interrogations in two days, and to explore correlated conceptions driven by the antithetical forces of postcolonial modernity, among them “Inter-Asia Networks: Connectivity and Circulation”; “Whose Asia? Whose Art?: New Collectivism and Internationalism in the Postwar Era”; “Between Singing Diva and Political Shaman: Femininity as a Critical Agent”; and “Storytellers on the Road: New Practices.”

The symposium is co-curated by Nikita Yingqian Cai and Mia Yu. The Para-curatorial Series was initiated by Guangdong Times Museum and the chief curator, Nikita Yinqqian Cai, in 2012. It is a discursive platform that aims at situating the critical mediation of art within a broader social, economic, and cultural context.

Times Art Center Berlin explores new models of developing Asian contemporary art institutions both in Europe and the world, through exhibitions, research, public programs and publications. Times Art Center Berlin is the first parallel institution of an Asia-based art museum overseas. It was founded in July 2018 by the Guangdong Times Museum, a non-profit private art museum situated within the Pearl River Delta in China. After the summer break, Times Art Center Berlin opens its permanent location at Brunnenstraße 9 in Berlin-Mitte.