Show: Borders, Boundaries, Barricades
Curated by Labbodies
Location: Gallery CA, Baltimore, MD
2015
Description: “Slit, Slip, Peel” is a mixed media piece that is performed differently with each iteration, a constant conversation. It is an attempt at reclaiming and transforming notions of gender, race, and sexuality in my queer Chinese-ness. I explore the ways in which the Asian body in the united states is gendered, racialized, de/sexualized, victimized, brutalized, invisibilized, exoticized, and defined. I engage in the surgical removal of internalized racism within me. The banana serves as a layered symbol. The banana is a fruit perfectly packaged for consumption. The model minority. The nutrition you put in your child’s lunch bag. Quickly filling. The clone. Its cultivation requires labor and land that is often exploited around the world. *Come mr. tallyman, tally me banana*…Confucius says the chopstick is less aggressive than the knife at the dining table. In this performance I reintroduce the knife. I perform and create in the moment when the point of the knife blade pierces the yellow and bitter skin of the banana. As I peel away my yellow phallus I attempt to reveal the white fruit that has been growing in this encasing. Do I eat the fruit? Do YOU eat the fruit? As I remove and eat my own penis, I consume my castration. A cycle of eating and vomiting, eating and vomiting. But what is left is my lacerated and limp skin, browning as the air touches its inside for the first time. The first breath. So sweet. What quiet violence do you perceive from this auto-assault? Perhaps I have reclaimed my alienation. A bunch of dicks framed and reframed for you. For me. projection :: a chair :: the knife :: the chopstick :: mr. harry belafonte :: bananas