Art Metropole

25 Nov. 2016

Model Minority As Discussed With Angry Asian Feminist Gang

Time

7-9 PM

Angry Asian Feminist Gang (AAFG) host a gathering and discussion around the book, Model Minority, edited by Chris Lee and Maiko Tanaka (2015, Gendai Gallery/Publication Studio), alongside AM Curator Nasrin Himada.

This is not an event to simply promote the book; it’s about taking its inquiries to task.

How, as arts organizations, do we resist the idea of “model minority” and in extension multiculturalism policies as they re-condition settler spatialities?
How, as cultural practitioners, producers and workers, can we use this book as it was intended, as a kit, that is “meant to be a resource for personal study and a companion for collective workshops, discussions, research actions on the model minority and related topics”?

Model Minority is an assemblage of the readings, articles, ephemera, and archives discovered and created from Gendai Gallery’s year-long programming series issued under the same name.

Model Minority contests the self-pretense of a unified Canada built on a foundation of diversity and passive coexistence, instead investigating a more radical version of a multicultural society through the lens of the “model minority:” a figure that functions to stratify and reify racial hierarchy while strengthening the template of the dominant culture and its power constructs. Model minority is a problematic concept that intersects deep within the ambiguity of the existing condition of multiculturalism in Canada.

AAFG is an amorphous group for self-identifying Asian Feminists (open and inclusive term of course) with an interest in art and cultural production. AAFG will facilitate a conversation that activates Model Minority as an artists’ book, conditioning a space for “thinking through together” what matters to us most when it comes to what it is that we want a book to do.

Participating Members: Serena Lee, Amy Wong, Pamila Matharu, Henry Heng Lu.

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