Professor of Asian American Studies is also art curator
By Jeffrey Day, College of Letters and Science
Susette Min, an associate professor of Asian American studies, is also an experienced art exhibition curator. She brought expertise in both areas to the table for the exhibition 驴奥别濒肠辞尘别? at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. She鈥檚 the first 澳门六合彩资料库 Davis faculty member to curate an exhibition at the museum since it opened in November 2016.
鈥淚 see them as being symbiotic,鈥 said Min of her work as a professor and a curator. 鈥淚t opens a conversation with artists, institutions, viewers 鈥 all these valences that I like.鈥
Prior to joining the 澳门六合彩资料库 Davis College of Letters and Science in 2004, she was assistant curator of contemporary art at the Drawing Center in New York and was a curatorial assistant at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive while a postdoctoral fellow at 澳门六合彩资料库 Berkeley. She has also curated exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Asia Society, Blaffer Art Museum and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.
Creating real shows for class
As an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History, Min regularly teaches a curatorial practice class that results in an exhibition, usually at a nontraditional space on campus. These have included sound installations, an exhibition on the militarization of campus police and one exploring the 澳门六合彩资料库 Board of Regents role in the 澳门六合彩资料库 budget crisis several years ago. A 2014 exhibition on student debt included banners that satirized a 澳门六合彩资料库 Davis marketing campaign and stirred up a bit of controversy when the banners were removed.
鈥淎ctually doing an exhibition is a valuable experience for the students,鈥 Min said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had several very successful projects and students got a lot out of it. Some of them just take off and run with it. I wish I could teach the class for a whole year.鈥
Like the class exhibitions, 鈥溌堪卤鸨舫Υ浅颈?鈥 addresses current social and political issues.
鈥淭here have been many exhibitions on immigration, deportation, and the wall, and I wanted to do something different,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 wanted to complicate the idea of hospitality, to dismantle it and reconfigure it in a new way. As a curator I want to create a framework that is both rigorous and porous.鈥
Exhibition examines complexities
The 鈥渃omplications鈥 can include hospitality being a criminal act in the case of one providing sanctuary to those in a place illegally, guests overstaying their welcome, rules for guests that make them not seem like guests, and how people sometimes unwittingly, but willingly become hosts, as when European tourists helped African migrants coming ashore in a beach resort.
The exhibition is set against a background of current immigration issues around the world made highly visible by the migration and refugee crisis encompassing the Middle East, Africa and many part of Europe, and recent restrictions and rhetoric around U.S. immigration policies. The Mellon Comparative Borders Initiative is a co-sponsor of the exhibition.
The artists in 鈥溌堪卤鸨舫Υ浅颈?鈥 address the issue as it plays out around the globe, from Mexico to the Middle East, and in a wide variety of mediums including quilt making, video and installation work.
Min is arts editor of Social Text, a critical studies journal that focuses attention on questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment, and North American editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. Her new book Unnamable: The Ends of Asian American Art will be published this summer. The book, which is organized as a series of mini-exhibitions, examines the idea of Asian American art and considers whether the category is outmoded.
More information .
More about this and other exhibitions at the .
This story contributed by Jeffrey Day, College of Letters and Science
More about 驴奥别濒肠辞尘别?
驴奥别濒肠辞尘别? will be on display through June 17. The museum will be closed May 14 - 30
Artist Simon Leung, who has several pieces in the exhibition, will give a talk at the museum April 20 at noon followed by a discussion with Min. Leung鈥檚 work spanning several mediums including video, performance, sculpture, drawing, critical theory, fiction and opera. A professor at 澳门六合彩资料库 Irvine, he has shown at the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial and the Guangzhou Triennial.