“Rumors of Necessity” is now on display at Tipton gallery until Nov. 15 with a scheduled reception including artists and curator on Nov. 1 from 6-8 p.m.
Curated by Alejandro Acierto, he states this exhibit “positions Asian American bodies in relation to conditions of surveillance, militarization and exclusion in an era of ongoing wars along the US border and abroad.”
Drawing on contemporary Asian American artists in Tennessee, Ohio, North Carolina and recorded archives, this exhibit articulates strategies of the state to depict the relation of control through militarization and exclusion of Asian Americans throughout Southern history.
Such artists featured are U.S. Southern-based Asian Americans Sisavahn Phouthavong, Paul Pak-hing Lee and Richard A. Lou. The contributors aim to present alternative visualizations of the historical traumas that stemmed from militarization and exclusion.
Acierto describes these works as “a direct conversation with Tennessee’s radicalized past where their work will be paired alongside images and ephemera from the era of Japanese internment at Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and with the establishment of confederate monuments that remain erected to this day.”
“It is crucial to present students and the community opportunities to have safe, inclusive spaces that provide potential for critical discussion on diverse topics, even controversial, in order to develop more aware, exposed and educated individuals,” Slocumb Galleries Director Karlota Contreras-Koterbay said. “I believe that art has the distinct agency to cross, re-investigate and rethink social, political, economic and cultural barriers that may produce a better society.”
This exhibit is sponsored ETSU Student Activities Allocation Committee, Tennessee Arts Commission’s Arts Project Support, East Tennessee Foundation’s Art Fund and American museum of Philippine Art.
