To commemorate the thirty-fifth year of mounting arts in a community context, the Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) presents “Out of the Archive: Process and Progress,” a major exhibition program. It aims to draw attention to the AAAC Artists Archive and its recently launched digital archive – artasiamerica.org. This program includes a special exhibition installation, a gallery talk, a catalogue, several essayists, and online interactive events and opportunities for the audience. The digital archive, a major undertaking over two years in the making, consists of about 10% of the total 1,500 Asian American artists entries in the original archive, which reflects the last 60 years and several generations of artistic production.

The four artists presented, Tomie Arai, Albert Chong, John Yoyogi Fortes, and Swati Khurana, have been selected from a review of all the artists posted in artasiamerica.org by guest curator Angel Velasco Shaw. The printed catalogue has been edited and coordinated by Sarita Echavez See who selected four writers to participate with her in reviewing the artists’ work: Karen Su, Karlyn Koh, and Jan Christian Bernabe.

AAAC seeks to expand the ways in which it has presented Asian American art in a community context. Expanding our approach to the literary arts, we are introducing a critical writing component in order to draw upon literary and cultural criticism for visual interpretive and critical thinking.

These essays shed light on these artists in a variety of ways such as: the artists’ relationship to the work that they exhibited at AAAC in the past; the critique and contextualization of their current work; and the national and international context for these artists’ creative production. Moreover, these essays launch an investigation into the shifting rhetorics of art criticism and cultural criticism. By bringing forth new perspectives in the context of the exhibition we aim to open up a critical dialogue that generates an appreciation for these art works and a critical language for substantively engaging with Asian American art.

In the era of globalization, the marketplace and the discourse associated with international art events, the exploration of identity has come to be seen as passé in many sectors of the art world. Insisting anew on the importance of visibility and recognition for Asian American artists, the AAAC wants its archival resources to serve artists and audiences by providing opportunities for continual interpretation and valuation of diverse artists and their works.

In addition to the online essays, the exhibition will also be online with an opportunity for online responses and comments by the audience. The Gallery Talk event on Oct 7th will be broadcast live on artasiamerica from White Box.