Qilin Dance Book is finally printing!

This summer I worked on finalizing the Qilin Dance Book project, with the help of editor Ralph Woo in Taiwan and the support of Lijiang Studio, and now finally the book is off to print! Woohoo! If you pre-ordered this book, expect it to arrive in late July 2025.

Also, after 3 years hiatus, my website is now back up and running!

More updates soon!

At Dusk, With Foam

AT DUSK WITH FOAM

Curated by SunDogs Studio (IG: sundogs_studio)



Featuring work by:

Jess T. Fang (IG: @jesstfang)

Kevin Perez (IG: @papo.cucaracha.vertedero.el3ro)

Andy Vible (IG: @fatfingers)

Sam DJ Bear

Ray Mak (IG: @mazuvision)

Frog Wing (IG: @theparhelia)

OCTOBER 20th- NOVEMBER 13th

Opening Night: October 28th, Friday, 7-9pm

Closing Night: November 13th, Sunday, 7-9pm

Opening/ Closing night DJ: Justin McDonald (@grizmostreet)

Show statement:

In the space between Dying Grass Moon (October) and Frost Moon (November), Curio Room + SunDogs Studio presents inaugural art show “At Dusk With Foam,” featuring the works of six artists- some based locally in Mount Kisco, and some from nearby regions yonder.

The artists and works chosen for “At Dusk With Foam” all reference some awareness of liminal statuses- questioning legibility and challenging recognization/ familiarity. Whether these involve blurring geographical/ cultural definitions, moral edges, or apparitions in the Uncanny Valley… The viewing experiences trace along boundaries, musing at the difference between life-and-death versus Funny-Haha. Together, this collection of pieces embody that creepy glee and joyful chill found before-and-after All Hallow’s Eve.

The name of the show was taken directly from the Wikipedia article for “Liminality”- more specifically, in the “Folklore” section, which gives examples of various folkloric figures who can only be killed in liminal spaces. Citing the Encyclopedia of Religion, the contributing writer describes how Vritra, a Hindu drought-demon, was slain by Indra during neither day nor night, but “at dusk, with foam…”

Following this, the rivers began to flow again.

We chose this phrase for how it encapsulates that vague state, using simple, clear words which anyone can understand. May the light of ambiguity serve as tools to vanquish one’s fears and obstacles.

AOTVU Show at Chappaqua Library

Our pieces from the “Arc of the Moral Universe” and “Arc of the Viral Universe” Notebook Projects (curated by Carla Rae Johnson) are now showing at the Chappaqua Public Library… Show has been extended to December 3rd, 2022! Stop by and visit the books, which are on view during Library Open Hours… Please check for Library hours, which vary by the day. Thanks Carla Rae for organizing : )

Email from Carla Rae:

“I also want to mention that we have lined up three more exhibitions of the notebooks for 2023. In the spring, the "Arc of the Viral Universe" will be at the gallery of Westchester Community College, Peekskill. There will also be a reading event at Studio Theatre in Exile at HVMOCA (Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art) where visitors can meet the "Arc-ists,' browse the notebooks. and listen to readings from their pages (date TBD) and in September/October the "Viral Universe" notebooks will be on exhibit in the Ottinger Room at the Croton Free Library (where the "Arc of the Moral Universe" had its debut!”

Fundraiser for Our Bookstore Project

Hello friends!

I am working on opening a bookstore (in Mount Kisco, NY) collaboratively with my partner, and our friends and family who have helped so far. We plan to carry mixed new and used books, with focus on literature, art books/ artist books, handmade books, multiculturalism, and books in other languages. The space can also function as a gallery, studio space, and community center/ venue.

I signed the lease in April, and have been working day-jobs while also tending to the things a bookstore needs. This is my first time starting a business, so I'm figuring things out as we go along.

We've launched a fundraiser to assist with covering startup expenses. If you feel called to get involved, and/or want to support the process, we appreciate the offer! We are painting and building the space out by ourselves, so funding goes mainly towards raw materials and inventory (like lumber for shelving). Anything is helpful! Even a few dollars is a gesture of public support- and it can help us buy a box of nails.

Our goal is to open doors by June, but, it depends on how soon we can get everything ready.

Link is below. I'm really slow with responding to messages these days, sorry in advance about any delays... Thanks for taking the time to read this!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-open-a-bookstore-in-mount-kisco

(cross-posted to other pages, but doing my best not to spam)

BACII Zine #5: Water

Hi! I will be facilitating an art-making workshop at Bacii’s “Water”-themed zine-making event of this TCM lunar cycle. BACII provides resources and support group meetings for processing grief and cycles of life.

RSVP at the link here: https://bacii.co/gather/a-water-themed-zine

(posted by_bacii):

“Join us for our fifth zine-making gathering on 1/26 where we’ll honor the season of Water in TCM. We began this collective zine-making series last spring and this is our final element to complete a full year of connecting to the cycles of life through the five elements, embodied meditation, movement, and art-making practices (stay tuned for future experimental offerings)!

Water is connected to the experience of fear. We’ll explore fear through water-inspired offerings, meditation, movement, and art-making practices to move through our fear and connect to the cycles of life. During this gathering, you’ll have the option to participate in a tea offering - whether that be to water, ancestors, or whomever you'd like. If you’d like to partake, please arrive with a cup of hot tea of your choice. Additionally, please arrive with a glass of water, paper, and your art-making tools of choice (pens, watercolors, paint, etc.).

By participating in this gathering, you’ll leave with a water-inspired piece of art and the option to contribute to our collective analog Water zine. If you make a submission, you’ll be sent a free printed copy!

All donations support the development of this programming and the production and printing of this zine. Please pay what you can.”

AAANZ 2021

On December 8th, from 6-7:30pm, I will be giving a 15-minute slideshow presentation on my shamanist studies, a summarized version of “Navigating Contemporary Ecological Concerns via Traditional Dongba Culture (2019)” as part of the "Feminist Collaborations Across Arts and Bioscience Technologies" panel hosted by the AAANZ (Art Association of Australia and New Zealand).

Here is the link to schedule (info/ registration through a button on top right corner): https://www.aaanz21.live

===========================

Our panel format:
Online panel: three individual paper presentations (15min each), followed by 15 min roundtable discussion, followed by 30min Q&A. Out of the 3 presenters, I will be presenting last.

——————

Paper 1: Klau Chinche

Title: Riot of Bodies: Gynepunk toolkits, radical networks and performative strategies around Ob/Gyn violence

Abstract: Gynepunk is a transhackfeminist cell: an independent research and practice of the effects and interconnections of health, technology, gender and difference; a cultural disruptor project, with an artivist hacker influence and background; a political experimentation to explore and critique embodied effects of biotechnologies' intersections. Through video, performance, zines, workshops, labware, digital archive, alchemy and self-defense tools, it’s an experience: a didactic coexistence; a visceral riot; interrelated digital organs; an ephemeral, ambulatory meeting place to share, exchange, and learn from our ailments, strengths, accidents, chronic conditions; a listening space, composed of open branches that need infrastructure and funding to continue to develop, grow, expand and mutate. We also will discuss Gynepunk ghosts, failure practices, media instrumentalization, academic vampirism, migratory glitches and fractal disruptions.

———-

Paper 2: Serina Tarkhanian

Title: Co-Healing and the Politics of Microbial Fluids

Abstract: A politics of antimicrobiality has characterised Western approaches to healthcare since germ theory was established by European scientists in the late 19th century. Since that time, medical and pharmacological enterprises have engaged in the quest for pathogenic immunity, a notion which now pervades all aspects of human life. Although current research has begun to re-evaluate human-microbial relationships, medical microbiopolitics continue to shape dysbiotic bodies – divorced from an understanding of our multispeciated nature. Against this reality, and against rising health inequities produced by biomedicine’s colonial/ patriarchal heritage, what new forms of healthing might enable people to reclaim biopower? Designer-researcher Serina Tarkhanian will unpack the politics around novel microbiome transplant treatments, offering an alternative vision of how microbiome treatments might be designed through the lens of feminist care ethics. Tarkhanian materialises this through a more-than-antimicrobial health praxis in The Microbial Bathhouse project, which explores microbial co-healing and how notions of immunity can be reconciled with deep human and microbial presence that extends beyond capitalist incentives of medical innovation. Tarkhanian will share her hybrid design approach, informed by ethnographic methods and vernacular health practices, talking through the complexities of transhacktivist artists and designers emerging as new care practitioners in their own rights.
—————-

Paper 3: Frog Wing

Title: Navigating Contemporary Ecological Concerns via Traditional Dongba Culture

Abstract: Dongba-ism is a polytheistic, pagan folk belief-system and traditional practice of the Naxi ethnic group in Southwest China. Maintenance and survival of Dongba culture relies on regular conduct of rituals led by Dongba shaman-priests (always men-practitioners). Dongba priests conduct rituals for the purpose of communicating and negotiating between human societies and Nature-Spirits, which reside in the host landscapes of the Yunnan-Sichuan regions. Some examples of Nature-Spirits include: water, mountains, wind, plants, animals, etc. As a Taiwanese-American artist at the Lijiang Studio residency, Qingwa (Frog) engaged in a long-term (approx. 9 years: 2013-2020) performance-art piece, studying Dongba-ism as a non-Naxi, American-born, woman-apprentice. During the course of her studies, the artist addressed multiple points of conflict, including problems of: cultural appropriation, landscape-blindness, and alienation of urbanized/ modernized/ globalized societies. This experiment, while initially conducted to examine gender roles and the pedagogical process of shaman-priest training, eventually reveals other questions related to ecological identity, theological cross-definitions and cultural boundaries, and the relevance of national and ethnic perspectives in ontological examinations of Dongba. This work was previously presented at the Landscape Ecology and Urban Sustainability Conference (LEUS) in 2019.

====================

BIO:

Frog Wing (a.k.a. Rana, Dava, Frog the Parhelia) (any pronouns) is a research-based interdisciplinary artist-performer born in Monterey Park, California. Frog works seasonally at Lijiang Studio, an art residency based in Yunnan, China, where they observe and practice rituals with Naxi Dongba shaman-priests. In 2016, they received the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Fellowship to study shamanism in Mongolia as a visual artist. Since the COVID19 pandemic began, they've been living in Mount Kisco, New York/ Lenapehoking, where they make paintings, tend gardens, and work as a florists' assistant. Rana is founder/ editor of SunDogs Studio, an experimental micropress and production company.

Two Links- on Indigenous Identity and Representation

1) From this week (November 12th, 2021): On Indigenous Perspectives at the COP26 Climate Change Conference- written by Mary Annette Pember, citizen of Red Cliff Ojibwe tribe. Worth reading if you want a summarized update of some important points which were brought up at this year’s event.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/indigenous-voices-debates-from-cop26-climate-meeting

2) An article from 1997, on the concept of “indigeneity in post-Colonial China,” floating around on my Facebook feed, I forget who reposted it. I’d bookmarked it because it’s a bit too long and dense to digest in one sitting, but in glancing over it a few times, I saw a couple of thought-provoking points which I felt could be investigated further… I’ll drop a few quotes here below, ones which caught my attention and I’ve been ruminating over it since. However, this all continues to circle back to my age-old problem, of how I have such few individuals I can talk to about these things, as most people just don’t care enough to try to understand, so I flip-flop between feeling frustrated or apathetic, giving up, and dissociating from caring as much as I used to… Anyways, Idk if this needs to be still needs to be said, but, I’m open to feedback on this, so contact me if you care enough to have a conversation.

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/question-minority-identity-and-indigeneity-post-colonial

“China's indigenous peoples are generally referred to as "minority nationalities" given their official status in the Chinese administrative structure. This rubric does them a disservice, obscuring not only their own indigenous identities, but also the nature of multiculturalism and multiethnicity in China. It also fails to recognize the dramatic revitalization of ethnic culture taking place in China today, both among the "minorities" living along the country's borders, and within the many peoples comprising the so-called Han majority.

…One of the difficult issues facing minority peoples of China is the official position that the Han majority is also an indigenous people with roots in the Wei River valley. Discussion about China's minority nationalities often fails to make this important point about government policy regarding Han indigeneity. The notion of a Han person or Han ren dates back centuries and refers to descendants of the Han dynasty that flourished around the same time as the Roman Empire. The concept of Han nationality or Han minzu, however, is an entirely modern phenomenon that arose with the shift from the Chinese empire to the modern nation-state. Prasenjit Duara recently noted that since the early part of this century, Chinese reformers have been concerned that the Chinese people lacked a sense of nationhood, unlike Westerners and China's minority groups. Chinese reformers believe that Chinese unity stopped at the clan or community level rather than extending to the nation as a whole. Sun Yat-Sen, leader of the republican movement that toppled the last imperial dynasty of China (the Qing) in 1911, popularized the idea that there were 'Five Peoples of China’-the Han, Manchus, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Hui (a term that included all Muslims in China).”

Remembering Fletcher Mackey

Screen Shot 2021-07-24 at 12.18.04 AM.png

Fletcher Mackey was my Painting professor 2011-2012 at MICA. After graduation we kept in touch and exchanged FB messages occasionally, maybe once a year, and I just sent him a SunDogs Studio analog newsletter in the mail last week. Was hoping to meet up for tea sometime in Baltimore post-pandemic, to catch up and ask for his insight and feedback on recent work projects and upcoming ideas.


Fletcher was someone who challenged me to make more work about “(my) culture.” At the time, I thought he seemed dismissive of some experimental work I brought in, like psychedelic box paintings or scribbles i made on broken skateboard pieces. I was frustrated that he wouldn’t consider box-making or skateboarding to be my culture (something i did daily out of utility, and as transportation to school); he was suggesting that I dig further into ancestry and make work about ethnic culture (i.e. Asia, where I happened to not-be, and not easily accessible). I wanted Fletcher to see that I think of my “culture” and cultural practices as extending beyond merely what is Asian, because I grew up in Los Angeles and tuned into Californian radio and tv, I went to the mall, parks, and beaches; Making artwork about those things didn’t mean I was rejecting or resisting any culture, I was mirroring and referencing what I knew. But if I hadn’t listened to him and questioned the suggestion, then I wouldn’t have gone off the deep end, desperately trying to find out what he meant, and I probably wouldn’t have done all that constant questioning exploratory work of the past 10 years, applying for grants and exploring Taiwan, China, and Mongolia, expanding my ideas of what culture or identity even are. I realize now that a lot that work was made because I was so confused and frustrated by the idea, yet also challenged by my disconnection with my family ancestry (due to war and migration). I pursued these experiences fervently so that I could clarify my own opinion and formulate my response to him one day.

I wish I could’ve met with him one more time so that I could tell him those things. I think about that often, actually. I would have liked to tell him about what those Mongolian shamans said to me in the woods and out in the steppes, I wonder what he would have thought about that.

Sending thanks and gratitude to Fletcher Mackey for catalyzing a cascade of questions and profoundly changing my life. I was inspired by his energy and his presence, and all those silver bangles; I’m so grateful now, that he was assigned as my Studio professor. I will really miss him, and I’ll have to get used to the idea that I won’t have the chance to ask for his advice anymore... May we continue the conversation next lifetime, if I’m lucky.

//

photo repost: @bmoreart

"Echolocations" show on Artsy

Spliced Connector Spring 2021 Exhibition: Echolocations

May 21 – September 23, 2021

| Organized by Karen Fitzgerald | Curated by Dudley Zopp | Hosted by SHIM Art Network

Press Release

“First True Leaves” - my piece which is featured in the Echolocations show

“First True Leaves” - my piece which is featured in the Echolocations show

“Bats send high frequency sound pulses, then listen to the echoes, to determine the size and shape of objects in their environment. This process, echolocation, is common to many life forms, including dolphins and humans. It’s fundamental to artists as they home in on the distance, size, and texture of their chosen subject. Responses come in colors, sounds, sensations of taste and smell; they arrive from the natural world or the urban landscape. Echolocation is a physiological process, one in which an artist engages all six senses in an effort to identify his/her subject, to find a form that articulates and transmits information to the world around them.

Organizing the information that bounces back to her, an artist asks not only what or whom she is listening to, but also how that information fits into the larger whole of contemporary and historical art. An artist’s work, written or painted or photographed or performed, echoes experienced vibrations that become new things that generate their own vibrations and echoes, and so become part of the hum of the universe.

The artists in this exhibition explore the physical properties of their materials. What is the role of plastic as both medium and cultural statement? How do the multiple frames of focus in collage combine images to establish new narratives? Materials have a specificity: paint or thread may mimic order and entropy in the natural world. An image maps a domestic situation. Text and image combine to drive home a point.

“First True Leaves” under UV blacklight exposure

“First True Leaves” under UV blacklight exposure

An artist’s signals may hit something solid and return descriptive information. Or, the signals may pass through solid objects into other worlds, so that the information is returned transmuted, strange, compellingly beautiful or radically unsettling. These artists, multi-generational, and with varying practices and ways of engaging with the worlds they inhabit, show us that within the undercurrents of their work, cross-currents flow outward, in repeated patterns, finding echoes and responses in the hearts and minds of viewers.”

-Dudley Zopp, Curator

SHIM Art Network is an art exhibition company that fills the gaps in the art world, providing exhibition opportunities to artists, curators, galleries, universities, and other organizations and affiliations with exhibition space for their projects on- and off-line.