Asian New Zealand identity, identity politics
AMY WENG | Louie Bretaña is a graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts and the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines. His work actively challenges Euro-western colonial histories through relational practices, encouraging a respectful engagement with culture via conversation and food…
AUSTIN TSENG | The year thus far has been quite a treat for connoisseurs of stage productions. This output has been notable for the coverage of a much-neglected history. The releases of opera The Bone Feeder, play The Mooncake and the Kumara and “large-scale documentary theatre” piece OTHER [chinese] have given us a compelling trifecta of interpretations of the Chinese experience in Aotearoa…
A poem by VANESSA CROFSKEY
MARGAUX WONG | This exhibition, like all things, began with a conversation. Late last year, after one of my family’s frequent visits to my workplace – they really come to see the dog Mia, not me – a conversation emerged about curating an exhibition on New Zealand Chinese. As our exchange strayed to food, as almost all of my conversations do, we began ruminating on the contributions the Chinese had made to this country…
On your left as you come up Great North Rd, just before Titirangi Rd going west, there is a cluster of restaurants serving great food – noodle houses, dumpling joints, a kebab shop. There’s also a dairy, a barbers, a vape store, a locksmith, Woottons Auto Accessories and two kinds of tool stores. This strip…
![At a rehearsal of OTHER [Chinese]. Photo by Julie Zhu](https://hainamana.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rehearsal-4-450x300.jpg)
OTHER [Chinese] isn’t your standard night out at the theatre. Directed by Alice Canton, and developed over the course of a year in consultation with individuals from various Chinese communities, OTHER [Chinese] is a work of documentary theatre that explores what it is to be Chinese in Auckland in the here and now. Stories that…
AMY WENG | Asian Men Talk About Sex is three women’s mission; to challenge the mainstream media’s portrayal of ‘sexy’ by asking every-day Asian men in New Zealand to talk about their sex lives. Director Chye-Ling Huang spoke to Amy Weng about the challenges involved in creating the documentary, and what she hopes the film will help us to understand…
CHYE-LING HUANG | In July, Fresh Off the page will present Conflict Circle, Singaporean playwright Ellison Tan’s foray into the absurd. With three professional productions under her belt, Ellison’s Conflict Circle challenges the nature of theatre and the futility and absurdity of performance…
XIN CHENG | Quite a few months ago, in Taiwan, I saw a carpenter’s tape measure with the scales in metric, Chinese inches and how fortuitous the length is according to fengshui…
AISHA JOHAN | FX Harsono is a leading figure within the Indonesian contemporary art scene. Over the past four decades, his work has developed against the backdrop of the rise and fall of the Soeharto regime, through revolution and reformation. On the eve of Jakarta’s election, which have incited simmering racial and religious tensions in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Harsono’s practice resonates with the national search for plurality. Aisha Johan caught up with the artist to talk…
AISHA JOHAN | I am very drawn to one of your works, Pilgrimage to History, 2013. I feel that you are giving a voice to those who no longer have one, from mass grave to mass audience. Could you please tell me more about the work? FX Harsono: In the beginning, I started this project about the genocide and mass grave that I had found out about in Blitar, a city where I was born and raised…
AMY WENG | John Young Zerunge is an Australian-Chinese artist and one of the co-founders and founding president of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. An initiative formed by the Asian Australian Artists’ Association in 1996, 4A has become a leading art institution in Australia, encouraging dialogue on Asian and Australian cultural relations, and…