WILLFUL DIALECTS
“militant mutations”
acrylic and walnut ink made locally by a loved one on cotton rag, hair
46×18”
Taking up the call of "a body that gets in the way" (after Sara Ahmed), the body is reimagined as an altar to the illegible and monstrous. Exploring fragmentation through the visual language of north Indian folk art and mixed media, this piece reflects the chimeras created between the self and harsh environment. What if the things that make us beastly- our hairiness, crooked canines, embodied rage- were what gave us power?
Featured artist for “Willful Dialects” curated by Cynthia Yi Chen and hosted at Distillery Gallery (4.26.25-5.24.25)
Curator Statement:
Willful Dialects considers spoken, visual, and felt languages and dialects through the lens of a selection of Asian-American and Asian Diaspora artists working in and around Boston. An anti-survey, this moment in time intends to refuse a monolithic descriptor of what it means to be Asian in America today.
The term “Asian-American” itself was coined in 1968 by Bay Area students and activists in part to foster camaraderie between ethnicities and reject the derogatory term “Oriental.” This concept of the Oriental as a fantasy constructed to maintain power dynamics was explored deeply in Edward Said’s seminal 1978 text Orientalism. Said noted that Orientalism is “willed human work.” Edward Said was a Palestinian-American writer whose work makes up some of the foundational texts of current Asian-American studies.
In the nonfiction book Willful Subjects, author Sara Ahmed also considers this willfulness, and the idea that, rather than a locale for penalization, difference can be a source of resilience. Willful Dialects continues this line of questioning, contextualizing the relationship between our wills and language’s ability to activate. The artists and artworks in this exhibition arguably specify their own dialects and dialectics of expression. Willful Dialects ponders these elastic potentialities of identity as a home where one can shape visual and auditory languages and thus experience.
Press: