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Critical Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Culture

Local Invisibility,
Postcolonial Feminisms
Asian American Contemporary
Artists in California
Laura Fantone
Critical Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Culture

Series Editors
Danielle Egan
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY, USA

Patricia Clough
Graduate Centre
City University of New York
New York, NY, USA
Highlighting the work taking place at the crossroads of sociology, sexuality
studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, this
series offers a platform for scholars pushing the boundaries of gender and
sexuality studies substantively, theoretically, and stylistically. The authors
draw on insights from diverse scholarship and research in popular culture,
ethnography, history, cinema, religion, performance, new media studies,
and technoscience studies to render visible the complex manner in which
gender and sexuality intersect and can, at times, create tensions and fis-
sures between one another. Encouraging breadth in terms of both scope
and theme, the series editors seek works that explore the multifaceted
domain of gender and sexuality in a manner that challenges the taken-for-­
granted. On one hand, the series foregrounds the pleasure, pain, politics,
and aesthetics at the nexus of sexual practice and gendered expression. On
the other, it explores new sites for the expression of gender and sexuality,
the new geographies of intimacy being constituted at both the local and
global scales.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14939
 Laura Fantone

Local Invisibility,
Postcolonial
Feminisms
Asian American Contemporary
Artists in California
Laura Fantone
Gender and Women’s Studies
University of California
Berkeley, CA, USA

Critical Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Culture

ISBN 978-1-137-50669-6    ISBN 978-1-137-50670-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50670-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953884

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic
adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or
hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover Image © Nancy Hom

Cover design by Fatima Jamadar

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
 This book is dedicated to all the artists, activists, cultural producers,
creative workers and immaterial laborers, who keep struggling across
generations to reach visibility, not only for their own sake, but to
empower neglected communities in Asia, the Americas and across the
Pacific. I dedicate this work to the memory of Asian American artists
and activists I heard about, saw, met and recognized in their greatness
when I arrived in the Bay Area and those that have passed away since:
Al Robles, Carlos Villa, Ruth Asawa, Yuri Kochiyama and Him Mark
Lai. The generation I do not write about here, yet whose work inspired
my project, and keeps inspiring those who came after them. Asian
Americans or not, all those enjoying their bright light and powerful
words and images of these artists.
 Acknowledgements

Writing the acknowledgments for this book is a great task. It allows me to

go back in time and to recognize the efforts, conversations, events,
encounters with people, to walk through all the turns that shaped this
book—so much time and energy shared with amazing artists, col-
leagues and friends. Their intelligence is the greatest gift that went into
this book.
Time and connections are the first gifts that must be acknowledged. All
the mistakes I made in the trajectory, and the many I was able to avoid
because of my colleagues and friends’ generous feedback, also need to be
acknowledged here.
The Asian American art I am so passionate about, evolves on its own; it
does not need a book like mine to be recognized. Asian American art’s
depth, diversity and multidimensionality will be acknowledged in more
relevant arenas, soon. I hope that this aspect of Asian American culture
will become more and more central to American culture, whatever that is.
Becoming aware of its limited visibility made me immensely more
thankful for the opportunities to find out so much about it while being in
Berkeley.
Going back to the beginning of the project, my deepest gratitude goes
to Trinh T. Minh-ha, whom I encountered on a hot day in Naples, eventu-
ally leading to research visual art, gender and postcoloniality. My thanks
extend as well to Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, the few experts who
endlessly support my oscillations between Asian and American cultures
and art, never asking me to stop crossing boundaries.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Nancy Hom and Michelle Dizon, whose work, politics and
ethics are an endless inspiration, and Cynthia Tom, whose energy and
dedication to Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) can not
be described fully with words. I am grateful to Cynthia for her welcoming,
friendly way of opening up to me, showing such amazing trust and soli-
darity given our differences. I would like to thank Moira Roth, whose vast
knowledge of AAWAA and feminist artists of color guided me, from afar,
and, at times, in wonderful, unexpectedly present ways.
There were many AAWAA artists whose work I could not include here,
even if their words sustained my project, bringing me new insights and
energy, welcoming me after my periods of absence: Shari de Boer, Kay
Kang, XiaoJie Zheng, Shizue Siegel, Lenore Chinn, Judy Shintani, Lucy
Arai, Susan Almazol, Reiko Fuiji and Irene Wibawa. Every show organized
by AAWAA led me to articulate new questions (certainly more relevant
than the naïve ones I had prepared) inspiring insights and turning points
in my research, becoming an endless conversation I do not wish to conclude
now that the book is printed. I regret that it has taken me so long to return
something to them.
On a scholarly level, I am deeply thankful and inspired by Margo
Machida, Mark Johnson, Gordon Chang, Alexandra Chang, Elaine Kim,
Constance Lewallen and Lawrence Rinder.
I am thankful to Tiffany Lin who accompanied me to my interview
with Betty Kano and Cynthia Tom, and helped me with recording and
transcribing.
I am thankful for the BAM PFA staff’s willingness to meet and show
me some of the original works by Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha. That experi-
ence was a turning point for my entire project.
While I was affiliated with the Beatrice Bain Research Group on Gender,
I benefited from the feedback of many brilliant scholars from all over the
world: Meeta Rani Jha, Wendy Sarvasy, Anna Novakov, Lin Bin, Veronica
Saenz, Nicole Roberts, Tomomi Kinawa and the amazing filmmaker Dai
Jin Hua. I don’t know how I could have managed without the friendship
of Yun Li, Rita Alfonso and the warmth of the BBRG common room.
In the same environment, sometimes I had the opportunity to meet
Berkeley graduate students in the decolonial working group lead by Laura
Peré​z, and especially the members of the visuality and alterity working
group: Annie Fukushima, Dalida Marìa Benfield and Wanda Alarcòn.
My thanks to BBRG Staff, Gillian Edgelow, Charis Thompson, Paola
Bacchetta, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Juana Rodrìguez for their support in
the early stages. Today I wish to send my best, thankful thoughts to all
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
   ix

the University of California Berkeley faculty with whom I had the pleasure
to discuss my project; especially Mel Chen, Greg Choy, Catherine Ceniza
Choy, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Alisa Bierrìa, Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong,
Francine Masiello and Heartha Sweet Wong.
I am deeply indebted for conversations on many topics that turned out
to be relevant to this book, though sometimes I was not open to take in
their insights, because they would have changed completely the structure
of my argument (as they ended up doing anyway obliquely).
My colleagues were a constant inspiration, offering conversation, com-
fort and tips, all gifts that last still today. I am especially thinking of Harvey
Dong, Greg Choy, Ayse Agis, Jac Asher and Barbara Barnes.
For their hospitality, generosity in listening to my many rants, thinking
hard on my early drafts’ feedbacks, thanks to Barbara Epstein, Lou De
Matteis, Marta Baldocchi, Silvia Federici, Shonya Sayres, Rose Kim, Patrizia
Longo, Martin Stokes, Eddie Yuen, Robin Balliger and Marco Jacquemet.
For their illuminating insights and criticism, I am indebted to Patricia
Clough, Hosu Kim and the anonymous reviewers who believed in the proj-
ect, and led me to major rearranging of the chapters, with a mix of grace
and piercing criticism that reminded me of many women in my family.
For the patient, meticulous editing, I am grateful for the assistance I
received from three brilliant women: Kathy Wallerstein, Lisa Ruth Elliott
and Katie Lally. I must thank Palgrave’s editorial team Lani Oshima, Alexis
Nelson and Kyra Saniewski for patiently guiding me from the beginning
to the end, pushing me to move on and conclude, beyond my doubts and
fears.
A final point on location: the book was completed in Italy. I am thank-
ful to all the women in my family who support me and who will never
read this book, but still understand how important it was for me to write
it. I am grateful to all those who believed in maintaining words and
images on the same plane, all those who cross borders with courage and
inspirations.
Finally, I am grateful for my rootedness: a specific place I always go
back to, my family home’s top floor. It is a former barn, where I could
hide and write in silence for hours and enjoy the view of the sun setting on
the Alps. Grazie nonni, papi e mamma per lo spazio fisico e mentale! In this
sentence the many struggles of living between languages lie, hardly hidden
behind this book’s inevitable surface—a trace of a wound, a gap, uno
squarcio, across languages, continents, cultures, generations of women:
appreciating art, being and writing in-between.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Visuality, Gender and Asian America 1

2 Asian American Art for the People 25

3 Traces and Visions of In-Betweenness 63

4 AAWAA: Visibility, Pan-Asian Identity and the Limits

of Community 93

5 Red and Gold Washing 139

6 Opacities: Local Venues, Cosmopolitan Imaginaries 181

7 Conclusions 211

Bibliography 221

Index 233

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Working Women, poster by Nancy Hom 26

Fig. 2.2 Nancy Hom and filmmaker Loni Ding at Kearny
Street Workshop, photo taken by Bob Hsiang 34
Fig. 2.3 Icons of Presence book cover, designed by artist Choppy Oshiro 37
Fig. 2.4 Chris Iijima and Nobuko Miyamoto, singing outdoors
in New York City, photo taken by Bob Hsiang
on MLK Day 1971 42
Fig. 3.1 Photo of Nothing but Ways installation by Lynn Kirby,
Trinh T. Minh-ha. Photo by Trinh T. Minh-ha 82
Fig. 3.2 Photo of L’Autre Marche installation 2006–2009
(photo taken by Trinh 2006) 84
Fig. 4.1 Cynthia Tom and Shari de Boer AAWAA’s 15th anniversary
timeline as a tree, photo by Cynthia Tom 96
Fig. 4.2 Cynthia Tom, Discards & Variances: Human Trafficking
from a Chinese Family Perspective, photo by the artist, 2015 111
Fig. 4.3 Cynthia Tom, Hom Shee Mock, 1923. Acrylic on canvas, 2008 113
Fig. 5.1 Hung Liu, Goddess of Love, Goddess of Democracy. 1989,
paint on canvas 145
Fig. 5.2 Hung Liu, Golden Lotus. Red Shoe. 1990, paint on canvas 149
Fig. 6.1 Stephanie Syjuco, MONEY FACTORY: Economic Reality Game,
Taiwan national museum, photo taken by the artist 195
Fig. 6.2 Michelle Dizon, Balikbayan Box, installation,
photo taken by the artist 200
Fig. 6.3 Michelle Dizon, Perpetual Peace, still from film frame,
photo taken by the artist 203

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Visuality, Gender

and Asian America

The persistent questioning of the insider’s and the outsider’s position in

terms of cultural politics is yet another way to work at the difficult edge
between these movements—inside out and outside in.
—Trinh T. Minh-ha, The Digital Film Event, p. 193

In 2005, I met Trinh T. Minh-ha in Naples and there I saw her films for the
first time. She presented The Fourth Dimension, as an experiment in decon-
structing Japan and exploring frames in digital art (2001). At the time
I was writing about colonialism, neo-orientalism and Japanese characters in
video games. Her visual work and writings shifted my trajectory towards
Asian Americanness, visuality, women artists and alterity. The only other
East Asian visual artists I had in mind at that time were Yoko Ono and
Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha—artists associated with highly experimental work,
centered around gender, otherness and visuality. The encounter with Trinh
T. Minh-ha changed my perspectives in deep ways, and some of the intel-
lectual and spiritual pathways where it took me are still unfolding today.
In 2007 I traveled to Berkeley to see a show at BAM-PFA (Berkeley Art
Museum) titled One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now. The occa-
sion was perfect for me because I had just started pursuing my research
interest in Asian American art, and the show’s curatorial statement promised
“a challenge to extend the category of Asian American art”:

© The Author(s) 2018 1

L. Fantone, Local Invisibility, Postcolonial Feminisms,
Critical Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50670-2_1
2 L. FANTONE

There can be no such thing as a collective definition of the constituency

called Asian America, … but the show was born from the desire to evaluate
an Asian American sense of self, an individualism that comprises an Asian
American cultural imagination. (One Way or Another brochure, 2007)

Curators Melissa Chu, Karin Higa and Susette Min surprised me in their
oscillation between using a collective, demographic category (Asian
American) and, at the same time, emphasizing the self and individuality
within it and thus denying its validity as a ground for a commonality, an
artistic style, or a shared set of concerns and foci in Asian American artists’
work. Theirs was a question coming from the inside, serving as a response
to the perception of art on the outside.
I wondered then how one was to define Asian American art. Is it art
made by people who live in the USA but are of Asian origins? Is it art that
reflects subjects and aesthetic styles or techniques typical of specific Asian
visual art traditions? Is it art that reflects the unique concerns, topics and
styles emerging from the experience of being part of the Asian diaspora in
the USA (Machida 2008, p. 29)? Many insides and outsides are at play in
the posing of such questions.
If there was no consensus on the definition of Asian American art
among the experts, then my initial research project was pointless. In that
moment I realized that my research would have to be an interrogation of
the history and meaning of Asian American art as an evolving, contested
cultural formation. As of now, after years of research and writing, those
same questions on Asian American art remain unsettled, even among
scholars and art historians specializing in Asian America—notably,
Machida, Chang and Johnson, Higa, Kim and Mizota—all of whom rec-
ognize the increased internal diversity of Asian American communities due
to the basic demographic growth of such groups across the USA, as well
as the vast differences among cultures and countries of origin. These are
some of the many outside factors shaping an externally imposed Asian
Americanness, a collective space of artistic, cultural and demographic shifts
and internal negotiations. The complicated question that remains on the
table is, how do demographics and cultural diversity influence style, sub-
jects and the foci of Asian American artists? Why, when, and to what pur-
poses do artists chose to identify with such a cultural or demographic
label, both in the past and today? Is it to claim visibility? To search for
belonging in the larger, diverse mix of American ethnicities and cultures?
These are the background questions to my investigation.
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 3

Margo Machida, an incredibly talented art historian, ended her seminal

book Unsettled Visions (2008) by stating that Asian American art is deeply
shaped by a poetics of positionality. In surveying most of the Asian American
artists emerging in the 1990s, she pointed out that it was impossible not to
examine three reemerging themes: othering (identity and difference),
social memory and trauma, and migration and relationship to place.
Machida sees a continuity across generations of Asian American artists and,
while registering important aesthetic and subject-choice differences, she
maintains a position based on an imagined connection ever enriched by
heterogeneity. Machida develops the idea of “communities of cultural
imagination” in describing contemporary Asian American art as moving
away from the opposing traps of either embracing one’s identity while
policing its boundaries or self-erasing. She “recognizes that cultural imagin­
ation is a communicative (and community) field in which the individual
and the collective flow back and forth, a field where human consciousness
(and creativity) is an active agent of innovation of the social imaginary”
(Machida 2008, p. 278). I use Machida’s conceptual guide to analyze con-
temporary art as a complex field full of tensions, yet still a shared ground.
She does not theorize a rupture among contemporary Asian American art-
ists, because ultimately her political goal is to promote a conception of the
Asian American art community as a plurality or, as she puts it, “communi-
ties of cultural imagination,” using art to give a heterogeneous group the
power of cultural, collective imagination (Machida 2008, p. 14).
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Karin Higa, in her 2002 survey
of Asian American women artists in California, entitled “What is an
American Woman Artist?” (in Art/Women/California, 1950–2000 2002),
claims that there are no connecting elements today to justify such a cate-
gory, even as she proceeds to describe the work of five major artists of the
twentieth century. Surprised again by this simultaneous negation and affir-
mation, I followed Higa’s writing, noticing how she honors the relevance
of the Asian American movement as the origin moment without which the
cultural and artistic production called “Asian American” would not be
recognized today. Higa also justifies the need to look at gender within that
category, given women’s double exclusion from feminist Eurocentrism
and from Asian American men’s oppression.
Superficially, this may seem a simplistic criterion based on an intersec-
tion of oppressions, justifying the search for the most oppressed subject,
the subaltern who can speak, and for whom, magically, the researcher-­
translator will provide articulation of her oppression. I remained fascinated
4 L. FANTONE

by that oscillation between the present need to claim an identity and the
simultaneous recognition of diversity within it, as if the label, while used,
has become stifling and stale. As a feminist, postcolonial scholar interested
in social movements, I find this oscillation interesting to explore in com-
parison with the debates in transnational feminism concerning the use of
terms “queer,” “gay” or “feminist” as accepted and rejected by younger
generations or by non-American LGBTQI* communities.
As I was immersing myself in the literature on Asian American Women,
I was exposed to a new set of ideas and genealogical questions on Asian
American art. In Fall 2008, I saw Asian American Modern Art: Shifting
Currents, 1900–1970 at the San Francisco de Young Museum, curated by
Mark Johnson and Daniel Cornell. Chinese American historian Gordon
Chang, art professor ShiPu Wang, and curator Karin Higa, wrote intro-
ductory texts that gave a comprehensive set of views on the contribution
of artists born in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly in Asia, who
resided in the USA. Many prominent names, such as Yayoi Kusama, Yun
Gee, Isamu Noguchi, Chiura Obata, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik were
featured in the show. From a feminist perspective, it featured few female
artists; with only nine out of sixty artists being female, they were outsiders
within the show. These artists were Miné Okubo, Miki Hayakawa, Hisako
Shimizu Hibi (married to painter George Matsaburo Hibi), Bernice Bing,
Tseng YuHo, Ruth Asawa, Kay Sekimachi and Emiko Nakano, all of them
connected to California. All the Japanese American women had experi-
enced internment.
I mention the show here because it was explicitly connecting Asian
American history with questions of representation, modernity and high
art. The show was defined by Higa as “the first comprehensive show that
examines the historical presence of artists of Asian descent in American art
[…] explicitly filtered through questions of race, identity and notions of
modernism” (Cornell and Johnson 2008, p. 15). This seems very much in
the same vein as Higa’s commentary on the One Way or Another show,
when Higa (together with Chu and Min) asks, rhetorically, what the poli-
tics of organizing a show around race could be, only to conclude its neces-
sity in the name of recovering the past of marginalized communities in the
United States (ibid., p. 17). The goal in each case is the validation of the
present communities by way of historicization, thus making the past useful
for the present. Higa demonstrates this in her language as well when she
points out that the term “Asian-American,” as one, hyphenated word, is
posthumous to most of the works and artists featured, and so the title of
the show keeps separate the terms “Asian,” “American” and “Modern.”
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 5

Reading Higa’s and ShiPu Wang’s insights led me to connect the

questions of modernity, modernism, primitivism and Eurocentrism in the
visual arts raised by cultural critics and postcolonial scholars like Kobena
Mercer, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall and Isaac Julien in the 1990s. These
scholars address questions of the politics of art museums in the West and
interrogate how the public spectacle of art plays a part in excluding from
modernity the colonial other, opening to current questions of cultural
equity. With a Gramscian approach, I took great inspiration from the
Asian American Modern Art show as a counter-hegemonic project on
modernism, cultural hybridity, and parallel and divergent modernities (to
use a term of James Clifford’s). I connect the materials presented in the
show with the critical questions posed by Kobena Mercer in his book
Cosmopolitan Modernisms (2005), part of the related MIT series of vol-
umes, Annotating Art Histories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives in the Visual
Art (2004–2007). Mercer registered the 1990s growth of attention in
the art world to non-Western artists and those with minority backgrounds
in the West, partly due, he argued, to the rising generation of curators
and critics of non-Western or minority backgrounds whose agenda
involved a project of inclusion and diversity. Mercer asked questions that
became crucial to my own project: Why does the contemporary so often
take precedence over the historical as the privileged focus for examining
matters of difference and identity? Does the heightened visibility of Black
and minority artists in private galleries and public museums really mean
that the historical problem of invisibility is now solved? To what extent
has the curating of non-Western materials in blockbuster exhibitions led
to displays that may actually obscure the fine art traditions of countries
that experienced colonialism? Has the very idea of inclusion now become
a double-edged sword? Could the “cosmopolitan” serve as a conceptual
tool capable of cutting through the congested, confusing condition cre-
ated by competing vocabularies—terms such as the “global,” the “inter-
national,” the “cross-cultural” and the “culturally diverse” (Mercer 2005,
p. 9)? Mercer’s pointing at modernism and its underplayed cross-cultural
past becomes helpful in exploring the contemporary in terms of a multi-
plicity of time and diverse influences. His questions continue to guide me
in fundamental ways throughout this project, expanding from classic
texts like Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979), Franz Fanon’s Black Skins
White Masks (2008/1952), Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other
(1989), Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) and the journal
Third Text, edited by Rasheed Areen.
6 L. FANTONE

The other fundamental text that inspired this work is Fresh Talk/Daring
Gazes, Conversations on Asian American Art, published in 2003 and
edited by Margo Machida, Elaine Kim and Sharon Mizota. Machida, in
her preface to the volume, defends the project of collectively writing about
Asian American artists in a context where identity is seen as rigid and
essentialist. She warns against the conflation of attention to the cultural
specificity of minorities and cultural nationalism. She also evokes the
need to embrace cross-ethnic communications on the parallels and con-
trasts between Asian, Latino and African American artists—a need that has
not yet been met today.
In the same volume, the key essay that deeply shaped the trajectory of
my research was “Interstitial Subjects: Asian American Visual Art as a Site
for New Cultural Conversations” by Kim et al. (2003, p. 1). In fifty pages,
Kim traces all the historical evolution of Asian American art since the first
photography studio in the 1850s’ Chinatowns. She argues for Asian
American art’s distinctive and unique Americanness, criticizing the art his-
torian’s desire to identify Asian art elements in the work of Asian American
artists as the only element that would authenticate them as such. Most
importantly, Kim develops a long section about the lesser-known artists of
the 1970s who played a crucial role in starting Asian American cultural
productions—written, visual and aural—often choosing the political form
of the collective. Kim’s focus here emphasizes the historical and political
aspects of art: the 1960s and 1970s’ openness to the streets, the public
space, the crowds protesting the Vietnam War, racial segregation, and police
brutality. She makes apparent the importance of the Asian American
movement and its interconnections with Black and Brown coalitions and
liberation movements as well as the new kinds of freely accessible art cre-
ated in the streets: murals and experimental printed materials such as zines,
posters and flyers. The collective impetus of that time still resonates
strongly and in my preliminary research I discovered quite a few texts
devoted to that period, written by Asian American participants. As much
as I liked the period, I felt that its chorality would have been hard for me
to study as a total outsider, separate in time, space and identity from that
movement and moment. I listened to the female voices of women like
Nancy Hom, Nellie Wong, Genny Lim and Janice Mirikitani; read their
poems, and appreciated their addressing of women’s multiple roles, their
activist messages, and, equally of importance, their silences. Their political
side came first, always the most visible priority, and then slowly came the
discovery of the inside, the personal, marked by gender and ethnicity: the
painful silences of exile and uprootedness.
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 7

“Interstitial Subjects” also gives an interesting reading of the 1990s’

increased attention to Asian American art, offering an enlightening point
on how public museums were in a budgetary crisis when they started to
court Asian American communities for financial support (2003, p. 18).
The politics of guilt, following the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles,
also brought sudden visibility to the Korean artists in California. Kim’s
sociopolitical reading of the ups and downs of institutional interest in
Asian American art led me to analyze San Francisco museums’ cultural
policies with a critical lens, looking at processes of circulation and com-
modification of Asianness. Kim articulates her critique in connection with
Latino and Black cultural critics (Coco Fusco, Isaac Julien, Faith Ringgold
and Guillermo Gomez-Peña), denouncing the disconnect between height-
ened cultural visibility and increased exclusion of the actual, local ethnic
communities. Ultimately, Kim calls for an assessment of Asian American
art as a cultural process in which identities and aesthetics are evaluated for
their impact and influence on American art. This assessment takes into
account the artists’ belonging to a racialized group, not for superficial
multicultural diversity, but because racialization in the USA has always
meant exclusion and marginality (2003, p. 46).
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss these topics with
Elaine Kim, and our conversations led me to considerable changes in the
organization of this book. On a personal note, Elaine Kim also helped me
to feel comfortable about researching Asian American art despite my out-
sider status, being neither Asian nor American. I had shared my transna-
tional feminist perspective on the artists’ work, but maintained a cautionary
distance until Elaine Kim and, in a different way, Trinh T. Minh-ha,
encouraged me to move closer to the topic. I grappled with my autobio-
graphical distance from Asian American artists and my curiosity for the
subject, as a feminist scholar interested in current “multicultural” policies
in European visual arts and the ongoing controversies on inclusivity and
diversity in key art venues in Paris, Venice and London. The cultural con-
text and social imaginaries are different, but the politics of representation
are similar in both cases, for one of the key tools used to defuse racial
­tensions and xenophobia often involves cultural policies, art museums,
immigrant communities and ethnic minorities.
As an Italian feminist trained in social, cultural and postcolonial theory,
I struggled with the ways in which research areas and academic disciplines
in the United States tend to produce divisions based on identity. The
more or less implicit assumption is that one should speak from one’s own
8 L. FANTONE

biographical standpoint and only pursue research topics where biographical,

identitarian authority can legitimize the person’s statements. For obvious
reasons, I have no pretense to be an expert on Asian American history, nor
to be an American art historian. Yet I think that intellectual curiosity
should not be thwarted to the point that academic writing should be lim-
ited to a person’s background. If research is always moved by curiosity and
academic research is formalized curiosity (as argued by Zora Neal Hurston
almost a century ago), I believe that curiosity is the sister of difference;
both depend on each other and on the desire to listen to other voices, other
stories. My scholarship can work as an effort to translate the time and
space of women’s stories, within the Benjaminian conception of the
scholar as translator, always struggling with the fear and inevitability of
betraying the original, carrying the burden of being an archivist, and a
barely visible political ally. As a sociologist and a gender scholar, I under-
stand the power I have in gathering information on and about women,
starting from facts and objects of analysis, and choosing how to arrange
them into stories I frame according to my intellectual views. In the past,
in Italy, I dedicated myself to oral history precisely because I was uncom-
fortable with the power position of the detached researcher, gathering
objective information. I tried ethnographic writing, in which my authority
as storyteller and specialized expert was supposed to be compensated by
thick descriptions and extensive rounds of feedback from the people I had
interviewed. I embraced silence for a few years, uncomfortable with how
to be the one speaking “for” and about other women and gender minori-
ties, even when moved by the best intention to spread and convey their
voices further. Ultimately, I always found, and still find, the need to speak
against power or injustice. The writings of Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989) as
well as Assia Djebar in her preface to Women of Algiers in their Apartment
(1992)1 offered me a way to discuss what I was curious about: sitting in
the corner, tiptoeing around it without speaking about it or for it through
any sense of European authority. The idea of solidarity as proximity and
vicinity is evoked both by Trinh and Djebar in their commitment to speak
“nearby,” in the vicinity, neither as an outsider looking from afar, nor as
an insider knowing it all. Trinh, while presenting images shot in Senegal,
professes with her voice off-screen:
I do not intend to speak about, just to speak nearby
Stressing the Observers’ objectivity,
Circles around the object of curiosity
Different views from different angles
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 9

Creativity and objectivity seem to run into conflict.

[…]
I am looking through a circle in a circle of looks
[…]
just to speak nearby
(Trinh 1992, p. 105)

Through these inspiring words I started to think of circularity, of writing

as a narrative relation, not just as a power relation. The horizontal posi-
tioning, so fundamental in Trinh T. Minh-ha’s poetic and cinematic work,
allows for a plurality of views and voices. It allows for knowing the self and
knowing the other, the outside-in and the inside-out, the artist and the
writers in a mutual recognition of support, and for a loss of control.

In writing close to the other of the other, I can only choose to maintain self-­
reflexively a critical relationship towards the material, a relationship that
defines both the subject written and the writing subject, undoing the I while
asking what do I want wanting to know you or me? (Trinh 1989, p. 79)

Following Trinh’s ethical and aesthetic positions, dwelling in the readings

she gave me, and sitting in her classes at Berkeley deeply shaped my
thoughts on the current project, in ways I cannot fully express in words.
Her invitation to be inside/outside, neither one nor the other, gave me
the freedom to shift across different artists, speaking nearby their work
and life trajectories. Most importantly, it brought a new dimension to my
original commitment to female stories that were personal and biographi-
cal, moving at a different level than the great narratives presented by
the Western social sciences. The memories of Asian American women art-
ists of the 1970s and 1980s generations became a core part of my research,
bringing me back to my original passion for oral history, yet with a new
understanding of the circularity and shared repetition of such stories, told
in the vicinity of the ethics of “speaking nearby.”
In December 2008 I started following the activities of the Asian
American Women Artists’ Association (AAWAA), moved by the idea of
looking at art produced by women collectively, or at least art produced
within a female community. I went to their meetings and volunteered for
their art show preparation. I attended their panel discussion at the de Young
Museum in San Francisco, titled AsianAMERICANArt: Re-Framing
the Genre. In January 2009 I saw their Artists-in-Residence show at the
de Young Museum, featuring ten AAWAA artists. In these high-profile
10 L. FANTONE

events I registered a certain “identity fatigue” expressed by younger Asian

American artists, which was an eye-opener for me—a novel articulation of
rejection for the superficiality of cultural policies aimed at minority com-
munities, otherwise kept at the margin of fundamental economic processes.
In this light, I interpreted the series of workshops self-­organized by the
AAWAA as a rejection of creative cages, attempting to limit market-driven
impositions on Asian American female artists. The AAWAA’s board mem-
bers took a decision to follow their internal pathways and to create deeply
biographical art unconstrained by external trends. These women were find-
ing energy from their fire within.
This is not dissimilar to what the artists and curators of the One Way or
Another show discussed in the show’s opening statement. Born in the
1970s and 1980s, they chose to distance themselves from the hyphenated
ethnic identity that so often led to creative constraints, including a pres-
sure to present their work as always consistent with the expectations of
said identity, seen as a fundamentally demographic or racial category and
imposed upon them by the dominant US population in its institutions and
daily interactions. Such expectations went hand in hand with Orientalist
exoticism in the worst cases and, even in the best cases, limited their art to
some reference to Asianness. Rebelling against both, they claimed the
right to opacity, the right to create art unrelated to their origins, the right
to reference California’s everydayness, and to work on global issues, in the
present and future, without necessarily referencing their ancestry and
biographies.
In 2010, in Berkeley, I spent many hours sitting in a room where I
could look directly, in person, at Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha’s original work,
and taking classes at the University of California on Asian American his-
tory, film and art. I was first opening myself to the outside, to the large
picture, and then zooming into the intimacy and materiality of the
­exquisite objects produced by Cha. As a diseuse, Cha lends her voice to
many women, yet when you try to trace her steps she leaves the frame,
hardly visible (Cha 1981, p. 114).
As I read Cha’s interviews and her poetic prose, I further developed my
transnational feminist and postcolonial critical lenses2 and decided to focus
on contemporary Asian American female artists in California, active from
the 1970s onward.
These seemed sufficient grounds on which to define a group of artists,
because their art and its reception was connected to questions of minori-
tization, internal and societal oppression, and gender discrimination.
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 11

Moreover, their art was aimed at creating a feminist community across

identities. Using an intersectional, transnational feminist standpoint to
write about women artists was possible, as attested by the rich and influ-
ential volume Talking Visions, published in 1998 by Ella Shoah in collabo-
ration with Coco Fusco and Marcia Tucker of the New Museum of
New York. While its premises about claiming multiculturalism as a
term seem today too optimistic, the idea of crossing multiple boundaries
and embracing a multiplicity of female scholars and artists in dialogue,
across their differences, still holds great importance. Particularly valuable
is the fact that the images and written texts have equal weight, and that the
volume ambitiously crosses many canons and debates that are still peri-
odized as belonging to different eras. In more than five hundred pages, it
covers race and queer theories, anti-colonial and postcolonial critiques,
aiming to undo any stable binary (Shohat 1998, p. 4). I draw inspiration
from Shohat’s critical analysis of the interconnectedness of third-word
struggles and transnational feminisms, especially when she cautions against
the fetishization of the “revolutionary moment” by later generations.
Resistance is not black and white, but rather multiple and fragmented.
Feminist scholarship can thus be based in polycentric approaches
(ibid., 22). Talking Vision continues to be an inspiration to think with art,
resisting the separation of feminist research and theories from visual repre-
sentations, and it has changed my way of doing feminist work by thinking
with images of non-Western, female artists.

Contours of the Research

My book fundamentally connects Asian immigration, gender and art, reg-
istering the recurring forms of Orientalism in contemporary art, thus con-
firming much of the findings in the existing literature, and, most importantly,
drawing temporal and spatial continuities that have been buried under the
implicit narratives of local, identity-based art exhibitions. My research fol-
lows some of the literature used in Asian American studies since, as Susan
Koshy has noted, it “regards a political subject formulation that makes vis-
ible a history of exclusion and discrimination against Asian immigrants”
(2004, p. 17). Various publications in the field of Asian cultural studies have
opened a transnational space of cultural analysis in the last decade: Shu Mei
Shih’s Visuality and Identity (2007), Peter Feng’s Identities in Motion
(2002), and Gina Marchetti’s Romance and the Yellow Peril (1993), all
offer interesting tools and politically multifaceted positions, though their
12 L. FANTONE

main focus is on film and popular media. This book borrows some of their
tools to look at the framing of high art as a transnational discourse and
takes the freedom to move between a theoretical level, a global, political
analysis, and a critique of specific local artists. It looks at art and culture in
response to Orientalist gender and racial stereotypes in order to define
hegemonic culture and spaces of resistance and creativity. I borrow the
tools of postcolonial theory to outline the persistence of forms of Orientalism
and the more or less subtle ways in which it keeps returning. I examine art
politically, as a cultural formation where claims of belonging and exclusions
take place.
This book fundamentally connects Asian immigration, gender and art,
registering the recurring forms of orientalism3 in contemporary art. It
thus confirms much of the findings in the existing literature while choos-
ing a more recent timeframe than that in the texts mentioned above and
most importantly, draws temporal and spatial continuities that have been
buried under the implicit narratives of local, identity-based art exhibi-
tions. My research follows some of the literature used in Asian American
studies since, as Susan Koshy noted, it “regards a political subject formu-
lation that makes visible a history of exclusion and discrimination against
Asian immigrants” (Koshy 2004, p. 13). Various publications in the field
of Asian cultural studies have opened a transnational space of cultural
analysis in the last decade: Shu Mei Shih’s Visuality and Identity (2007),
Peter Feng’s Identities in Motion (2002) and Roger Garcia’s Out of the
Shadows (2001) offer interesting tools and politically multifaceted posi-
tions, though their main focus is on film and popular media. My book
borrows some of their tools to look at the framing of high art and to cri-
tique specific local artists.
This book covers contemporary art from the 1970s to the present,
moving in dialogue with three specific temporal nodes: the political legacy
of 1970s’ Asian American art in the United States, feminist art and the
emergence of a transnational feminist standpoint in the 1990s; and, the
contemporary East Asian/Pacific Rim networks of cultural and artistic
production. The main argument develops along two lines. On the one
hand I compare the 1990s’ celebration of ethnic identity, within the multi­
culturalist frame of cultural policies, with the Asian American movement
of the late 1960s, in which art and politics were deeply intertwined. On
the other hand, I aim to problematize the “global” and the Chinese “art
boom” as buzzwords that reconfigure East–West discourses on contem-
porary art. The book intervenes in the contemporary shift of attention to
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 13

Chinese art, as a key locus where questions of value and cosmopolitanism

emerge. Looking at the opportunities of visibility and ghettoization for
such artists in three different moments (1970s, late 1980s/1990s and
2000s), two distinct questions shape my research: What spaces were avail-
able for diasporic female artists in the 1970s and 1980s, and how do
California-based Asian artists relate to today’s new attention to Chinese
art in the cultural arena? Furthermore, what differences, opportunities
and closures emerge for Asian American, female-identified artists in the
2000s? Do gender and ethnicity offer a pathway to connect Asian dia-
sporic female artists to contemporary art institutions in California? I argue
that the relatively “low visibility” of Asian American art has gendered
dimensions. With these questions in mind, I look at the intersection of art,
gender and Asianness as generative of a panoply of multilayered discourses.
Asianness here becomes a critical category to contrast historical forms of
orientalism reproduced in art. Seen together with gender, it offers the
opportunity to critique a persistent stereotype of the silent, obedient,
model-minority Asian female. The next step is to ask, how does it apply to
the artist? If art is often perceived as the realm of rebellion or the freedom
from controlling images, we must ask an established feminist art question,
translating it in intersectional terms: What is art for the female artist?
Moreover, how is the female artist perceived by the public? By curators
and critics? It is crucial for this project to move past registering the simple
predominance of male artists, offering an intersectional perspective.
Registering the low visibility of Asian American artists, I shine light on
an under-attended group of postcolonial, female-identified artists in
California; their unique methods, politics, poetics and aesthetics; and their
pioneering and embracing of visual art as a form of resistance against racial
and gender stereotypes. Their politics of refusal to fit into orientalist tropes
are varied and worthy of a close reading, which I will carry out for each
artist at the beginning of each subsequent chapter of the book. I ultimately
argue that affiliations with East Asia—China, especially—are becoming an
asset to artists, while their belonging to an American ethnic and gender
minority is losing ground. Looking at the last decade, no one can ignore
the ongoing historical shift rooted in the emergence of China as a global
power, nor how this economic and political change is reflected in the art
and cultural spheres (see Zhang 1997), reorienting the axis of identifica-
tion and marginality of Asian American communities vis-à-vis American
hegemonic culture. In the new scenario, affiliation with East Asia is
becoming an asset for artists in terms of visibility and marketability.
14 L. FANTONE

Lisa Lowe was likewise a crucial inspiration with regards to Asian

Americanness in defining the modern as a non-universal term with a spe-
cific geohistorical connotation. The modern is connected to progress and
development, clearly originating in the West even when it cannot be
thought of without encounters with other spaces and people. Lowe con-
trasts the Western with the contemporary radical reworkings of Asian
identities globally (1996, p. xxii). The Asian bourgeoisie becomes migrant
in the West. Such a social constituency finds itself fitting in the “minority
discourse” in the United States and also part of a narrative detailing the
consolidation of transnationalism. I will use Lowe’s point and elaborate on
such connections in what I define as “red and gold washing.” While my
project maintains a local focus, within California, it engages with ques-
tions of globalization, migration, gender and the temporalities of postco-
lonialism. Applying a transnational, postcolonial feminist approach, my
project also tackles questions of absence and presence of the gendered and
ethnically marked bodies of artists in the art space.

Questions of Location
Some of the artists I have interviewed since 2009 are first-generation
immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s, while other artists were
born in America (as first, half or second generation). Still others are fourth
generation, having grown up in families of Chinese and Japanese origin,
and who have also been deeply imbued with multiple aspects of Californian
culture. I talked with contemporary artists Betty Kano, Nancy Hom,
Trinh T. Minh-ha and Cynthia Tom, asking about their aesthetic choices,
the biographical experiences that determined their need to create a com-
munity and their opinions on the relevance of that collectivity in the new
millennium.
In my interviews, I focus on the interrelated questions of art, value and
work in various ways by focusing on the work of art as valued or devalued
in the Californian, Asian-immigrant community; the political work and
activism the artist performs for the Asian community; the limited mone-
tary value of the work of art produced by Asian female-identified artists in
America; and finally, the transformative value of such art, against oriental-
ist expectations. I argue that this group of female-identified, contemporary
artists of Asian descent in California are transforming the predomi-
nantly orientalist images still circulating in middle and high-brow art
institutions today, by either rejecting an exoticized use of their ethnic
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 15

background, or, when not born in the United States, refusing to tie their
work solely to their country of origin.
The stories of the postcolonial female artists I have chosen call into
question ethnic identifications and suggest far more interesting trajecto-
ries than the entrenchment in the multicultural ghettoes and identity poli-
tics that was so typically embraced in the 1990s. Therefore, if the central
subjects of this book are contemporary female visual artists of Asian
descent in California, this book is not strictly about Asian American iden-
tity. I use the umbrella term consciously, not to suggest a cohesive unity
but, rather, to reference an external label often imposed on the artists
through continuing social processes of becoming other, yet always already
American.
Throughout the book, I follow the artists’ ongoing attempts to gain
visibility and to create artistic connections based on identification and
mutual support within the Asian American diaspora in the San Francisco
Bay Area. I have chosen to analyze artwork that challenges the persistent
stereotypical images of Asian American femininities as passive and “orien-
tal.” I look at the specific cultural milieu, where transnational, intergenera-
tional and gender connections have flourished, demonstrating a unique
case of translation and a postcolonial crossing of East Asian and American
West Coast cultures. I argue that the artwork reflects a political and aes-
thetic urgency and a constant weaving of identities and languages, dislo-
cating many binaries and stable forms (centers and peripheries, male and
female, written and visual canons). The interview transcripts highlight the
fact that these contemporary artists present a complex positioning that
fluctuates through a poetic space without sacrificing a sense of rootedness
in their political community. I ask about their aesthetic choices, factors
that have determined their need to create a community and their opinions
on the relevance of that collectivity in the new millennium.

Why California?
This book focuses on California because of the unique role that the West
Coast has played as a primary destination for Asian (especially Chinese and
Japanese) immigrants since the nineteenth century, and for many other
East and South Asian groups in the twentieth century. California is a
highly relevant place for the development of Asian American communities
and cultural formations over the last two centuries.
16 L. FANTONE

Despite various waves of discriminatory laws, Chinese and Japanese

communities have been able to develop a strong culture and a fertile
ground for artists to find inspiration and subjects. California, along with
the state of Washington, is also an area where Asian art, culture and their
continuity with the local Asian American communities have become the
most publicly recognized in political and cultural spheres. With the influx
of Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese and Laotians, such spheres continue to
grow and take on new dimensions. The accumulation of history, memory,
art forms, languages and family traditions in California provides a rich
backdrop to the artistic endeavors of contemporary Asian American art-
ists. Thus, the work of contemporary artists who reside in California will
likewise offer critiques of traditions and of dominant images, configuring
unexpected intersections of class, gender and race in American culture.
Apart from the historical and epistemological dimensions, there are two
more reasons why I focus on these contemporary California-based artists.
First, many left-leaning curators and artists in California, and especially in
the Bay Area, typically see themselves as politicized and attentive to issues
of “diversity,” and are prone to espousing simplified “multicultural” lib-
eral narratives emerging from, and perhaps fixed to, the 1970s. I unpack
this issue throughout the book by examining the different political posi-
tions among the female artists interviewed, and make note of who chooses
to mobilize ethnic identity as well as when and why some artists reject
these tropes entirely. Second, the role of California in relation to the
Pacific Rim and the discourse of the “global” in its local interactions are
also key components to my argument. California and the West Coast more
broadly will continue to play a strong role in terms of US cultural politics
toward Asia, perhaps in the contradictory ways that echo the focus on Asia
uttered by the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia”4 slogan in 2010
and the dangerous Trans-Pacific Partnership drafted in 2015, and as of the
end of 2016 clearly never going into effect.

Questions of Positionality
I present Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Michelle Dizon
as postcolonial artists who have worked outside the strict boundaries of
nationality and ethnicity, thereby avoiding being situated in any of those
categories through their unique ways of crossing genres and contaminat-
ing languages, poetic forms and other media of choice. While questioning
the persistence of national labels applied to female artists with diasporic
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 17

backgrounds, I also discuss the work of Hung Liu, an accomplished

Chinese painter who resided in the San Francisco Bay Area, yet is widely
recognized in China as well. Liu presents an interesting tension, pointing
to discontinuities between the notion of Asian Americanness and the more
frequently acknowledged Sinocentrism today.
In my cultural critique of the art work at hand and its context of pro-
duction, I argue that the positions taken by the artists presented here,
including those of the younger generation, tend to resist fixed identities
and embrace autonomous spaces. In this part of the argument, I inter-
twine gender and postcolonial criticisms of globalization. As argued by
Arjun Appadurai and many others, globalization imposes on to scholars
the question of coevality, disrupting once and for all the dualism of the
future-oriented West vs. the traditional rest of the world, which is always
seen as traditional and described in the past tense. I apply such critique
to art institutions like the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, which
persists in presenting shows that reproduce an imaginary orientalized
Asian past, moving away from contemporaneity and safely downplaying
the key theme of contamination, despite contamination being reflected
in Asian American art.

Organization of the Chapters

The book is organized into six chapters. This first introduces the overarch-
ing themes, theories and research tools, while the remaining chapters
develop chronologically from the 1970s to the 2000s, framing the work of
specific artists in the cultural and political milieu of California.
In Chap. 2, I focus on the work of first-generation Chinese American
artist Nancy Hom, active in political circles in the Bay Area since the
1970s. Drawing on her interviews, I explore the way gender and politics
have shaped her identification with Asian Americanness both as an emerg-
ing political concept and as a tool for building community.
In Chap. 3, I look at the 1980s and early 1990s, especially the shift to
video and experimental filmmaking, discussing the work of Theresa
Hak-Kyung Cha and Trinh T. Minh-ha. I argue that these artists, who
have a uniquely transnational sensibility, do not fit neatly into a concept
of feminist art, nor do they present themselves as simply Asian American.
Rather, their work engages in political and poetic processes of “becom-
ing” that short-circuit localism and cosmopolitanism through an onto-
logical shift. Drawing from feminist theory, and specifically Elaine Kim’s
18 L. FANTONE

writings, I offer the analogy of “border writing” (a term first coined by

Gloria Anzaldúa) as it reconfigures any sense of stable identity, memory
or fixed language. This allows for the emergence of intervals, breaks and
fragments in poetics that act as reflections of multiple cultural, historical
and biographical ruptures.
The fourth chapter covers the late 1990s by focusing on Flo Oy Wong
and Cynthia Tom, and in particular the need for community building and
feminist support among Asian American artists. Their artwork is con-
nected to a turn in cultural politics and the prevalence of identity dis-
courses. The chapter then develops an analysis of the Asian American
Women Artists Association (AAWAA) founded in San Francisco in the
1980s. By interviewing its core members, Nancy Hom, Betty Kano and
Cynthia Tom, I examine how the association promoted solidarity and
strength among artists by using the term Asian American, reviving its con-
nection to 1970s politics of creative assertion of a community’s visibility. I
particularly give space to Flo Oy Wong, as a founding member of AAWAA,
to talk about the necessity to have a gendered and ethnicity-based artists’
association. What do AAWAA artists share? What is the interplay of ethnic-
ity and gender in Oy Wong’s work? What kinds of feminist negotiations
between the personal, on the one hand, and the ethnic, immigrant iden-
tity, on the other, underlie her creative processes?
This chapter also inevitably engages with the historical trajectory of
“Asian American” as a term moving from counter-hegemonic space into a
wide circulation in multicultural policies, which I consider in relation to a
current terminology crisis. I look at two generations of artists and the
evolution of the term Asian American as they use it, asking in my inter-
views what it means for them. By examining their answers, I connect them
to a key paradox explored by various cultural critics in the 1990s; that
once a hyphenated identity becomes a commonly used label, it loses its
potential to destabilize hegemony. Discourses of identity and resistance
have crumbled since the 1990s in a non-dialectical reconfiguration of
power and cultural hegemony that is still with us today.
Chapter 5 points to a shift from Asian Americanness to global, transna-
tional issues in the 2000s. I analyze the policies of local art institutions
and the self-positioning of Chinese artist Hung Liu, who has been living
in California for decades. I argue that her need to reference her national
identity and roots in presenting the subject of her art is connected to a
turn in cultural politics and the prevalence of Chinese national discourses.
I develop here my denunciation of the current transnational promotion
 INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY, GENDER AND ASIAN AMERICA 19

of Chinese art, connecting it to a critique of Eurocentrism, fueling the

neo-­orientalist appetites reflected by recent California exhibits. I critique
specific California art museums for their curatorial choices, as having a
silent effect of marginalizing diasporic artists in the United States, as well
as involuntarily erasing historical connections and continuities across the
Pacific Rim, all the while reassuring Western audiences of their cosmo-
politanism. Here is where the high-art cosmopolitan discourse, predi-
cated upon the celebration of California’s multiple cultures and identities,
clashes with the rejection of the Asian female artist, reduced too often to
an immigrant distant other, despite her local situatedness in contemporary
California. I frame Liu’s positions as strategic essentialism, allowing her to
meet the expectations of Americans regarding what female and Asian
artists are supposed to offer to the general public while telling stories of
Asian America.
The sixth chapter draws conclusions from all the interviews and critical
analysis carried out throughout the previous chapters, demonstrating the
contemporary low-visibility of Asian Americanness5 in contrast with high-­
profile contemporary East Asian art, especially Chinese. Here my analysis
points to a shift from Asian Americanness to global, transnational issues in
the 2000s. I focus on the emerging Asian American artist from California,
Michelle Dizon, who positions her work in global circuits and embraces a
postcolonial poetics outside of strictly national frames, all while maintain-
ing a strong, decolonial political valence to her work with critiques of
commodification and globalization.
In the book’s Conclusions, I return to my initial question of the visibility
of Chinese artists, and the invisibilization of Asian diasporic female artists in
America. I discuss the use of Asian American identity, when embraced by the
artists and critics as a label, in terms of a double-edged sword. On one side,
we see its ghettoizing limits and, on the other, a much-needed critique of
current hegemonic Sinocentrism. Referencing the work of the artists ana-
lyzed in Chap. 3, I argue that the tension between cosmopolitanism and a
strong identity-based communitarianism permeating artistic discourses can
be undone by embracing a transnational, postcolonial, feminist approach in
cultural policies in contemporary California. My critique of the current
transnational promotion of Chinese art is connected to a critique of
Eurocentrism as it fuels orientalist appetites reflected by recent California
exhibits. I register the contradictions and hierarchies developing between
cosmopolitanism and diversity, localism and exoticism, and elaborate the dis-
cussion by engaging with both Pheng Cheah’s critique of cosmopolitanism
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 Kuitenkin hän eräänä iltana ajaa Kulhiaan. Ei tänä vuonna
arvatenkaan lunta tulekaan, syksyinen tuuli vain tuivertelee ja ilma
on läpipääsemättömän musta. Tulet tuikkivat Linnan kartanosta,
kirkkaat ja itsetietoisen näköiset tulet niinkuin rikkailla ainakin, mutta
mökkiryhmän valkeat ovat himmeät ja vaivaisen näköiset.

"Minä ajattelen", sanoo herra kruununvouti, "että häät pidettäisiin

juhlien vaiheilla, ehkäpä jouluaattona."

Kulhian patruuna katselee sikariaan.

"Kuinka vain", vastaa hän. "Mutta jouluaattona… eikös pappien

silloin, ymmärtääkseni, pidä valmistautua juhliin. Mutta kuinka
tahdotte, en osaa siihen sanoa sinne, en tänne."

Patruuna on kodikas mies ja luo katseensa vaimoonsa ikäänkuin

kysyäkseen, että "kuinkasta sinä, äiti, olet tämän asian itse tykönäsi
harkinnut." Mutta Kulhian patrunessa on iso ja leveä ja käskemään
tottunut, hän pyörittelee vain lihavia, valkeita käsiään eikä vastaa
mitään; hyvä on, että asia tulee järjestykseen ja hyvä on, että
kartanoon saadaan kunnollinen vävy.

"Vaikka", jatkaa herra kruununvouti, "eihän tämä asia yksinomaan

minusta riipu eikä teistäkään."

Eivätkö Kulhian tyttären silmät, jotka ovat olleet kuin tyven,

selittämätön meri pilvisäällä, eivätkö ne hetkeksi välähdä niinkuin
järvenpinta silloin, kun aurinko haihtuvaksi tuokioksi heittää sille
säteensä ja eikö tummaan, verhottuun ääneen ole tullut kuin
helähdys salatusta ilosta.
 "Miten vain tahdot, kruununvouti", vastaa hän. Ja sitten: "Sanoitko
jouluaattona? Olkoon sitten jouluaattona."

Mutta ei herra kruununvouti ole sen iloisempi, kun hän syyspimeän

läpi ajaa kotiinsa, eikä hänen mielensä tule sen valoisammaksi,
vaikka hän käskee sytyttää valot kaikkiin huoneisiinsa ja antaa
pianon soida.

Herra kruununvouti on yksinäinen, hänellä on virkansa, pienet

rikkautensa ja suuri, laaja huoneustonsa eikä mitään muuta.
Muutamana iltana oli hän puhunut siitä Kulhian tyttärelle ja Kulhian
tytär nyökäyttää vaaleaa päätään ja luo häneen pitkän katseen
sinisistä silmistään.

"Hyvä on", sanoo hän, "tiedän, mihin aiotte tulla. Minä rupean
toveriksenne teidän yksinäisyyteenne".

Sellaista se oli ollut. Oliko se kenties jonkunlaista sääliä? Herra

kruununvouti lyö loppuakordit ja huoahtaa. Sotaherrana hänen
oikeastaan pitäisi kirota.

Seuraavana aamuna, varsin varhain, hän saa vieraan. Se vieras

on hieno mies, vaikka tuoksahtaakin hiukan väkeville. Mutta muuten
kai hän ei voisi puhua. Jos herra kruununvoudilta jälkeenpäin
tiedusteltaisiin, minkä näköinen kävijä oli, niin hän ei voisi antaa
tyhjentävää selvitystä. Jotakin tummaa siinä vain oli ja jotakin
niinkuin erämaasta.

"Istukaa", sanoo herra kruununvouti.

"Kiitos", vastaa vieras, muttei istuudu. "Minä olen Kautisten

kartanosta, tiedättehän."
 "Tiedän", sanoo herra kruununvouti, muttei saa terästetyksi
katsettaan.

"Ja minä tulin vain katsomaan, minkä näköinen te olette", jatkaa

vieras. "Sitä ette panne pahaksenne".

"En."

"Lisäksi minä tahdoin sanoa teille, että kyllä kai te nyt olette
onnellinen."

Herra kruununvouti nousee seisomaan. Hän ojentautuu koko

pituuteensa. Pitääkö hänen sanoa: "Tuossa on ovi, herra". Mutta
mies ei ole tullut pilkalla, nyt hän jo nähtävästikin ajattelee jotakin
muuta ja kääntyy lähteäkseen.

"Tämän minä vain tahdoin sanoa teille, kruununvouti", lopettaa

hän.
"Hyvästi".

"Hyvästi", vastaa herra kruununvouti soinnuttomasti.

Sen päivän ehtoolla ei kruununvoudin talo ole valaistu eikä piano

soi. Hän istuu työhuoneessaan ja joskus hän nousee ja kävelee läpi
pimeitten huoneitten rakennuksen päästä päähän.

"Illallinen olisi katettu", sanoo emännöitsijä.

Herra kruununvouti herää kuin jostakin unesta.

"Kiitoksia", vastaa hän, "mutta minä en syö illallista tänään".

"Onpa tämä kummallista", ajattelee vanha ja kokenut

emännöitsijä. "Ensin käy Kautisten nuori herra, sitten kapteeni
kuljeskelee pimeässä eikä syö illallista. Alkaakohan totisakki pian
taas kokoontua?"

Mutta totisakki ei ala kokoontua, ei ainakaan vielä. Herra

kruununvouti ajattelee vain, että hänestä on viime aikoina tuntunut
siltä kuin aurinko olisi paistanut yölläkin ja kuin aavistettava, tuskin
huomattavissa oleva pilvi nyt juuri olisi vetäytynyt sen eteen. Mutta
kun hän tulee kauemmaksi ajatuksissaan, naurahtaa hän niille
itsekseen. Aurinko, mikä helvetin aurinko yöllä paistaisi tälle
pallonpuoliskolle! Tähti se on, joka on tuikkinut, kirkas ja
välkehtelevä tähti, joka juuri senvuoksi näyttää niin kauniilta, että se
on niin kaukana ja korkealla.

Sitten hän aikoo sekoittaa itselleen grogin, mutta lopultakaan hän

ei sitä tee. Miksi hän ottaisi grogin? Hänhän voisi menettää
miehekkään tasapainonsa ja kirjoittaa tunteellisen kirjeen. Eikä se
sovi hänelle.

Ja hän menee taas pimeän huoneen ikkunan luo, jonne tulet

paljaaksi riistetyn puiston läpi tuikkivat kylältä ja Linnan kartanosta.
Mutta vaikka hän kuinka vetää kulmakarvansa ryppyyn ja puristaa
huulensa yhteen, ei hän voi olla itsekseen huoahtamatta:

"Miksikä tämän teit, Kulhian valkoinen tytär?"

*****

Vaikka eihän Kulhian vaalea, äänetön tyttö ole hänelle mitään

tehnyt.
Hänen omatuntonsa saattaa kyllä hyvinkin kestää tarkastuksen.
 Mutta eräänä aamuna se tulee. Herra kruununvouti on juuri silloin
asettunut pöytänsä ääreen virkatoimiinsa ja on syrjäisestä hyvinkin
juhlallinen nähdä. Ulkona on sateista ja harmajaa ja ikkunat valuvat
vettä, mutta työhuoneessa on lämmintä ja viihtyisää ja uunissa palaa
tuli. Ja herra kruununvouti istuu ja kirjoittaa.

Silloin Kulhian renki vääntyy sisälle.

"Täällä olisi muuan pieni paketti", sanoo hän, "ja kirje. Patruuna
lähetti."

"Patruunako lähetti"? kysyy herra kruununvouti varmuuden vuoksi

ja tuntee piston rinnassaan.

"Niin, patruuna."

"Sanoiko hän, tuleeko vastausta."

"Ei se siitä puhunut mitään."

"Hyvä on. Pankaa ne tuohon pöydälle."

Sitten mies saa mennä.

Herra kruununvouti kirjoittaa virkakirjeensä loppuun, kirjoittaa

uhallakin. Hän juontaa kasvonsa koviksi ja tunteettomiksi, mikä on
mennyt, se on mennyt. Hänhän on antanut parhaan ikänsä mennä
työssä ja asiallisessa toiminnassa, miksi hän nyt rupesikaan…

Sorein kynänvedoin herra kruununvouti allekirjoittaa

virkakirjeensä, panee sen laskoksille ja sulkee kellertävään kuoreen.
Mutta sydäntä vihlaisee, niinkuin hän muistelee joskus nuorempana
tapahtuneen.
 Vaikk'eihän hän vielä tiedä, mitä Kulhian lähetys sisältääkään.
Ohimennen, kuin varkain, ottaa hän kirjeen ja paketin pöydältä ja
menee sisähuoneisiin. Varovaisesti leikkaa hän kuoren auki ja ottaa
esille kirjeen, joka on Kulhian patruunan hiukan kankeaa käsialaa.
Eikä se pitkä olekaan.

"Tyttäreni pyynnöstä lähetän tämän. En minä ollenkaan ymmärrä,

mistä tämä nyt tuli. Mutta minä toivon hartaasti, että aika tasoittaa
sen. mitä mahdollisesti on ollut välissä. Käykää talossa."

Herra kruununvouti hymähtää, mutta hän ei tiedä, että veret

samalla pakenevat hänen kasvoiltaan. Turhaan Kulhian patruuna
kirjoittaa melkein kuin anteeksipyytäen, — Kautisten poika, se
puolihupsu, tuli ja vei. Siinä ei ole sen enempää puhumista.

Polkaistako jalkaa, kirahtaako! Se kannattaisi, mutta se ei

parantaisi tapahtunutta tosiseikkaa. Onko hän rakastanut? On,
omalla hiljaisella tavallaan, itsekseen, toiselle sitä näyttämättä. Ja se
kai oli päivä päivältä kasvanut hänen itsensä siitä tietämättä.

Tuliko hän tunteelliseksi, eikö hänestä tuntunut kuin jokin hänen

sisässään itkisi. Häntähän tukehdutti ja pakahdutti. Pois se, hän ei
ollut enää niitä miehiä, jotka poimivat lähtiä taivaalta. Sitä
tehdäkseen täytyy olla runoilija, runoilija millä tavalla tahansa.

Mitä hän viitsii avata kääröä. Hän tietää, että sileä, kultainen
sormus sieltä pyörähtää lattialle. Mutta hän avaa sen kuitenkin.

"Tässä se siis on", sanoo hän ja hänen ensi ajatuksensa on

viskata se jonnekin.

Sitten hän alkaa katsella omaa kiiltävää sormustaan.

 "Minun kai olisi lähetettävä tämä takaisin", ajattelee hän ja ottaa
sen jo sormestaan, mutta asettaa sen taas entiselle paikalleen.

"Ruoka olisi pöydässä", ilmoittaa emännöitsijä.

Herra kruununvouti ei sitä kuule. Hän istuu tunti tunnin jälkeen ja

tarkastelee sormuksia ajattelematta mitään, mutta joka hermollaan
tuntien. Alkaa jo hämärtää.

"Nyt olisi jo päivällisen aika", ilmoittaa emännöitsijä toistamiseen.

"Pankaa puita pesään, minulla on kylmä", sanoo herra

kruununvouti.

Häntä palelee todellakin, sillä ulkona sataa ja kylmä viima tulee

järveltä käsin. Mutta kun emännöitsijä tuo puita, sanoo hän uskotun
palvelijan suulaudella:

"Kulhian tytär ja Kautisten poika siellä taas näkyivät ajelevan

Linnasta käsin."

"Vai niin", vastaa herra kruununvouti hiljaisesti.

"Kun tarkenevatkin tällaisella jumalanilmalla".

"Hm", sanoo herra kruununvouti.

Ja hän tarkastelee edelleenkin välkkyviä sormuksia.

"Kun Kautisten poikaa ei sinulla enää ole", sanoo hän itsekseen,

"niin tule silloin hakemaan omasi, minun omani tai molemmat. Yön
uni, tähden lento, — mikä meni, se meni, mutta toivomasta ei
kukaan kiellä."
 Mutta kun herra kruununvouti asettaa molemmat sormukset
laatikkoon, eivät taivaankannella kimmeltele tähdet. Sade piiskaa
ikkunaruutuja ja pimeys on läpäisemätön eikä kruununvoudin talosta
kuulu pianonsoitto, vaan ikkunat ovat mustat ja pimeät ja kahlekoira
ulvoo koppinsa edustalla, mutta muuten on talossa autiota ja
yksinäistä niin kuin asuisi siellä suru.

Viimeinen harha-askel

Vieras maa ja vieraat ihmiset ja vieraat, oudot rakennukset

ympärillä. Monessa maassa ja monessa kaupungissa hän on käynyt,
muttei milloinkaan tässä. Ja monia, monia vieraita ihmisiä hän on
nähnyt, muttei milloinkaan näitä.

Kirkkojen kellot soivat ja sade putoaa maahan, lempeä ja lämmin

sade, ja Kautisten poika kulkee kadulta kadulle ja puistosta puistoon.

Sateisena sunnuntaipäivänä, valkenipa tuo päivä missä tahansa,

elämä aivan kuin hetkeksi seisahtuu. Mietitään sitä mikä on mennyt
tai ei mietitä mitään, jotkut ovat tehdyn tai teeskentelemättömän
hartaita ja ajattelevat pelolla, että joskus on itsekunkin kuoltava.
Ilman sitä pelkoa ei ylimalkaan mitään hartautta olisikaan, ei tehtyä
eikä teeskentelemätöntä.

"Mikä päivä nyt on?" kysyy Kautisten poika ensimmäiseltä

vastaantulijalta.

"Saastattoman sikiämisen."
 "Hm, kiitos", murahtaa Kautisten poika ja koettaa palautella
mieleensä jotakin. Mutta sellaista päivää hän ei muista, sellainen ei
kuulu meidän uskontoomme.

Ja hän kulkee taas eteenpäin ja sairaus polttaa suonissa. Hän ei

tahdo miettiä eikä hän tahdo ajatella sitä, mikä on saavuttamatonta,
hän tahtoo vain mennä eteenpäin ja unohtaa.

Ja kirkkojen kellot soivat.

Mitä on ylimalkaan tämä mainen vaelluksemme. Me synnymme

kuollaksemme, siinä vanha totuus. Toiselta elämä sujuu
raskaammin, toiselta helpommin, mutta vaikka miten suuria
puuhaisimme, ei maailma siitä muutu ja hauta on edessä joka
tapauksessa.

"Niin vainkin, Kautisten vanhin ja ainoa poika."

Hän painaa hatun syvemmälle päähänsä ja jouduttaa askeleitaan.

Eteenpäin hänen täytyy.

Me synnymme kuollaksemme, ja siinä Kautisten ja Kulhian

rajamailla syntyi myöskin jotakin kuollakseen. Sikisi ja syntyi
saastattomasti. Ja kuoli, koska se oli kuollakseen syntynytkin. Se
täytyi tietää ja ymmärtää edeltäpäin.

Sade hellittää hetkeksi, aurinko pilkahtaa esiin ja Kautisten poika

tuntee itsensä synkäksi ja kuin kaikkien katselemaksi. Mutta pian
alkaa taas sataa. Kunhan päivä nyt vain menisi ja tulisi pimeys.

Vaan se ei mene. Vain harmaus, sade ja raskaus antavat aavistaa

pimeyden, joka on tuleva, tähdettömän pimeyden. Ihmiset kulkevat
ohitse ja joku luo häneen ohimennessään välinpitämättömän
katseen.

Ei Kautisten poika muista hänen nimeänsäkään, lieneekö hän sitä

milloinkaan kuullutkaan. Hän muistaa vain totisen metsän, maantien
ja jotakin sinistä ja ihmeellisen vaaleaa.

Oliko hän silloin, tämän ihmeellisen vaaleuden kohdatessaan

kenties jotakin tietoisesti tai tiedottomasti suunnitellut, jotakin, joka
ehkä oli tekemisissä edessäpäin olevan elämän kanssa? Ei hän
tiennyt, ei tiennyt, mutta sen hän tiesi, ettei hänellä siihen ollut
oikeutta ja ettei hän ainakaan ollut siitä mitään puhunut. Tuskin he
olivat puhuneet muuta kuin hyvää päivää ja hyvästi. Hänen
velvollisuuksiinsa kuului antaa ihmisten olla rauhassa. Vieläkin
enemmän: parempi oli, ettei hän heitä lähestynytkään.

Kautisten poika puree yhteen hampaitaan ja kiroilee itseään nyt

niinkuin monesti ennenkin. Kulhia on siellä kaukana ja vanhemmat
myöskin ja hän itse täällä. Mutta oma syy, oma syy, älä yritä vierittää
sitä kenenkään toisen niskoille. Kävele vain täällä ja odota
välttämättömästi tulevaa.

Ja Kautisten poika huokaisee ja huomaa, että hänen on enää

suotta kirota itseään. Että hän jo muutamia aikoja sitten on kirottu.
Että pimeyteen tuomitut voivat katsella tähtiä vain kaukaa. Ja että
se, mikä oli tapahtunut Kautisten ja Kulhian rajamailla, oli ollut vain
tähden katselemista.

"Hyvä on", koettaa hän tyynesti ja paatuneesti ajatella, "mikä on

mennyt, se ei tule takaisin. Kastuukin tässä. Pitäisi mennä
ravintolaan lämmittelemään ja syömään."
 Liput satamassa riippuvat märkinä ja surkeina pitkin tankoja eikä
Kautisten poika löydä mitään sopivaa ravintolaa.

Hän paaduttaa vieläkin mieltänsä.

"On tämäkin merkillinen kaupunki", sanoo hän itsekseen. "Vain

yhtä juhlaa ja hymistystä."

Näin hän sanoo, mutta koko ajan hän ajattelee jotakin Kautisten ja
Kulhian rajamailta, ajattelee kaukaisesti, taltutellen ja vältellen. Ja
vilunpuistatukset yltyvät.

Kautisten poika hymähtää ja kohauttaa olkapäitään. Kirkkoon kai

tässä on mentävä, se näkyy kuuluvan tämän kaupungin tapoihin.

Mutta kirkko on miltei tyhjä. Taustalla kukitetut alttarit ja sivuilla

mustaverhoiset rippituolit, siellä täällä joku rukoileva, ja kaiken yllä,
kuin avaruudesta kuuluvana, hiljainen urkujenhyminä. Kautisten
poika ottaa hattunsa ja aikoo lähteä.

"Jos tahdotte rukoilla, on täällä oikeus viipyä. Ja kyllä muutenkin."

"Anteeksi, mutta minä en kuulu tähän uskontokuntaan", vastaa

Kautisten poika ja pyörittelee hattuaan. "Olen vain muuten
katselemassa."

"Tuolla ylhäällä", sanoo mies lempeästi, "eivät uskontokunnat

mitään merkitse."

"Aivan oikein", myöntää Kautisten poika asiallisesti, "se on

hyvinkin mahdollista. En ole sitä asiaa tarkemmin harkinnut. Mutta
mitä te minusta oikein tahdotte?"
 Hän tuntee olonsa rauhallisemmaksi ja viihtyisämmäksi kuin
pitkään aikaan, ja itsestään hän tulee ajatelleeksi, että pelkurit ja
raukat viimeisillä hetkillään turvautuvat uskontoon. Hän ajattelisi
eteenpäin, muttei ehdi, kun toinen hänet keskeyttää.

"En halua teiltä mitään, mutta jos teillä on jotakin sydämellänne,

niin kuuntelen kernaasti."

Kenelläpä ei jotakin olisi sydämellään. Kautisten pojalla on

kokonainen pitkä rekisteri, jonka hän Kulhian ja Kautisten vaiheilla
olisi tahtonut saada olemattomaksi. Mutta mikä on ollut, se jää. Ehkä
ei olisi aiheetonta kertoa kaikkea tuolle tuntemattomalle,
ventovieraalle papille vieraalla maalla. Ehkä se, ellei juuri helpoittaisi,
niin ainakin antaisi uusia suuntaviivoja.

Näin hän ajattelee, mutta kysyy siitä huolimatta:

"Oletteko te jesuiitta?"

Mies hymähti.

"En juuri sitä", vastaa hän, "mutta kenties jotakin sinne päin."

Kautisten poika miettii, sitten hän ratkaisee.

"No, voittehan sen saada tietää, koska se teitä huvittaa", sanoo

hän vihdoin. "Minä rakastan muuatta naista, mutten voi häntä
saada."

"Ihminen rakastaa ja haluaa tässä maailmassa paljonkin, mitä ei

voi saada. Mikä tässä on esteenä?"

"Olen sairas."
 Nyt pappi luo häneen pitkän, tutkivan katseen.

"Nuoruutenne ylitsekäymisiäkö?" kysyy hän.

Kautisten poika punastuu, sitäkin ensimmäisen kerran pitkästä

aikaa.

"Niin", myöntää hän. "Sitäkin ja paljon muuta lisäksi."

"Mutta", jatkaa hän hetken kuluttua, "tiesinhän, ettette voisi minua

auttaa. Olette nyt kuitenkin kaiken kuullut, ja siihen, mitä olen
sanonut, sisältyy koko elämäni ja koko synnintunnustukseni."

"Se on todellakin paljon, hyvin paljon", sanoo pappi ja nyökäyttää

ajeltua päätänsä. "Entä minne nyt aiotte mennä?"

"Eteenpäin, aina vain eteenpäin, kunnes välttämätön piste tulee."

"Niin. Ja ajattelette mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, omalla syylläni,

omalla suurella syylläni. Se on hyvä."

"En ymmärrä teitä."

"Tarkoitan, että teillä on syyllisyydentunto ja katumus, ja se on

aina hyvä merkki. Herramme käyttää ihmeellisiä teitä halutessaan
kääntää syntisiä puoleensa: te ette ollut huomannut syntistä
vaellustanne ennenkuin olitte tavannut naisen, josta kerroitte, ettekä
silloinkaan vielä huomannut syntiä synniksi, vaan kadutte ainoastaan
sitä, että olitte hankkinut itsellenne parantumattoman taudin…"

"Herra!" keskeytti Kautisten poika kiivaasti.

Mutta pappi jatkoi rauhallisesti ja järkähtämättömästi:

 "Ja sentähden loppuvaelluksenne tulee olemaan tarkoituksetonta
kiertämistä paikasta toiseen, ainaista tunnonvaivaa, ainaista
itsensäsyyttelemistä ja ainaista sen halajamista, jota ette koskaan
voi saada. Mutta minä rukoilen ja uskon, että te löydätte kirkkauden
ja rauhan. Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus… Armahtakoon teitä
Kaikkivaltias ja antakoon teille teidän syntinne anteeksi."

Niin se oli sanottu. Askeleet kajahtavat autiossa kirkossa, kynttilät

jumalanäidin kuvan edessä lepattavat ja kukat tuoksuvat ja taas
kuuluu kaiken yli urkujen hyminä kuin avaruudesta tulevana. Siinä
seisoo siis Kautisten vanhin ja ainoa poika. Ei hän ensin älyä, oliko
tämä äskeinen unta vai tapahtunutta, mutta lopulta hän havahtuu
ikäänkuin horroksista ja horjuu suonet polttavina kadulle.

*****

Ulkona on sade jo tauonnut ja katulyhdyt sytytetty. Ilma on kostea

ja raaka, ja Kautisten poika värisee viluissaan, mutta sitä hän ei
huomaa. Sen näköisenä kuin olisi loppuunajettu istahtaa hän
lähimmälle eteensattuvalle penkille.

Viimat yltyvät, lakkaavat sitten taas ja tulee yö. Mutta Kautisten

poika ei huomaa sitäkään, hän vain istuu siinä, missä istuu ja
ajattelee Kulhian tytärtä ja muutamia myöhäissyksyn päiviä.

"Ne eivät tule enää koskaan takaisin enkä minä enää koskaan
teitä näe, neiti, mutta ajattelemasta teitä ja rakastamasta teitä, —
niin, siitähän ei kukaan voi minua estää. Eikä kukaan sitä tahdokaan,
ette edes te. Kenties, kentiespä te, siellä Kulhian yläkerrassa
nähdessänne Kautisten vanhan päädyn hiukan muistatte minuakin…
Ainaista vaellusta, niinhän se sanoi…"
 Äkkiä hän tuntee kyynelhelmen kuumentavan poskeaan ja nousee
seisaalleen, mutta horjahtaa takaisin.

"Mitä helv…", pääsee häneltä, "olenko minä tunteellinen?"

Ajatus pysähtyy tähän rientääkseen taas Kulhian tyttöön ja sitä

tietä ajatukseen rauhasta ja kirkkaudesta. Sitähän se pappi, prelaatti,
mikä hän lienee ollut, puhui. Misereatur tui…

Tähän Kautisten pojan tajunta sammui. Ja oli yö.

*****

Kun hän avaa silmänsä, ei hän tiedä, missä hän on. Hänen
ympärillään on vain vaaleat seinät ja yhdellä seinällä jokin verho.
Eikä mitään muuta.

"Toivon, etten olisi herännyt", sanoo hän.

"Ellette olisi herännyt, missä sitten nyt olisitte?"

Kautisten poika ei jaksa vastata. Hän kuulee vain hiljaisen,

lempeän naisäänen, muttei näe kysyjää. Hetken kuluttua hän jälleen
avaa silmänsä.

"Olenko minä sairas?"

"Hyvin sairas."

"Mikä?"

"Kuume."

"Entä muuta?"
 Kotvan hiljaisuuden jälkeen vastataan tukahtuneesti:

"Se mikä teitä aina seuraa."

Kautisten poika luulee purevansa hampaitaan yhteen, mutta sitä

hän ei itse asiassa kykene tekemään.

"Neiti", sanoo hän taas.

"Niin".

"Kestääkö tätä kauan?"

Nyt Kautisten poika kuulee sydämensä lyönnit. Huoneessa

vallitsee pitkä, odottava hiljaisuus.

"En tiedä, onko minulla oikeutta sanoa sitä teille", kuuluu viimein
vienosti ja epäröiden, "mutta ehkä teidän olisi hyvä tietää se."

"Niin, sanokaa vaan."

"Te ette, ellei ihmettä tapahdu, tule koskaan siitä nousemaan."

"Prelaatti siis erehtyi", sanoi Kautisten poika viimein melkein

kovasti.

"Miten erehtyi?"

"Hän sanoi minun tulevan tarkoituksettomasti vaeltamaan… ja

paljon muutakin."

"Rukoilkaa ihmettä."

"Ihmeitten aika on ohi. Sitäpaitsi siitä ei kenellekään olisi hyötyä."

 "Kuolemattomalle sielullenne."

"Hm."

Aika vierii. Kautisten poika ei tiedä, mitä hänen ääressään

tapahtuu tai on tapahtumatta, ei, milloin hän on olemassa, milloin ei.
Ja kerran hän herää siihen, että suuret, siniset silmät häntä
katselevat. Nähdessään, että Kautisten poika avaa silmänsä,
kääntää nainen päänsä poispäin ja aikoo vetäytyä syrjään, mutta
potilas saa tartutuksi hänen pukunsa liepeeseen. "Tekö se olette?"

"Minä."

"Älkää väistäkö, neiti. Katsokaa minuun vielä."

"Niin mutta… minulla ei ole siihen oikeutta…"

Nainen seisoo epäröiden ja liikkumattomana. Viimein hän alkaa

vetää huntua kasvoilleen.

"Ei, ei", pyytää Kautisten poika, ja nainen antaa hunnun olla.

"Sellaiset ne siis olivat", sanoo Kautisten poika kuin itsekseen. "Ja

sellaiset… Sanokaa, neiti, olemmeko Suomessa?"

"Mahdollisimman kaukana sieltä."

"Ah, niin. Mutta te ette tiedä, ettepä tiedä sitä tietä, joka vie
Kautisten tienhaarasta Kulhian puistokujalle, kiertää Kirkkojärven ja
Linnan tilukset, ette tiedä sitä tietä ettekä mitä sillä tapahtui…
Katsokaa, kesää seuraa syksy, ikuinen kaunis syksy, ja syksyn
jälkeen
tulee kuolema, valkea ja äänetön…"
 "Te ette saa kiihoittaa itseänne maallisilla mietteillä. Ajatelkaa
sieluanne."

"Sieluani. Niin, näin paljon me emme milloinkaan puhelleet hänen

kanssansa. Me ajelimme vain, kun sade putosi maahan, ajelimme ja
sanoimme hyvää päivää ja hyvästi. Minä en edes tiedä hänen
ristimänimeään, mutta mitä minä sillä tiedolla tein. Tehän
ymmärrätte, ettei meistä milloinkaan olisi voinut mitään tulla."

"Ymmärrän", vastasi nainen soinnuttomasti ja peitti kasvonsa

käsillään.

"Ottakaa pois kätenne, neiti. Tehän sanoitte, etten milloinkaan olisi

tästä nouseva, ja se onkin minulle yhdentekevää. Saanko tietää
teidän nimenne?"

"Saatte sanoa minua miksi tahdotte."

"Hyvä on. Sinä olet siis nimetön niinkuin hänkin. Mutta hän oli
Kulhiasta, enkä tiedä, mistä sinä olet. Kuitenkin: sinä katselet
samalla tavalla kuin hänkin, vaikka kasvosi ovatkin erilaiset…"

"Te houritte. Käskenkö tänne isän antamaan teille ehtoollisen ja

viimeisen voitelun."

"Ei, minä en kuulu tähän uskontokuntaan, mutta jos tahdot, niin

rukoile sinä minun puolestani, — niin, ja jos tahdot, myöskin hänen
puolestaan, joka katseli niinkuin sinä."

"Voi teitä! Te siis tahdotte kuollakin vääräoppisena. Rukoilkaa,

rukoilkaa ihmettä."
 Kautisten pojan katse harhaili ympäri huonetta ja pysähtyi taas
naiseen.

"Suutele minua!" pyysi hän hiljaa, mutta nainen käänsi kasvonsa

hänestä.

"Se on minulle kuolemansynti", kuiskasi hän.

"Onko synti tehdä lähimmäiselleen hyvää?"

"Rukoiletteko sitten ihmettä?"

"Rukoilen."

"Ja otatte vastaan ehtoollisen ja viimeisen voitelun?"

"Otan, mutta kiiruhda."

Silloin nainen kumartui hänen ylitseen ja suuteli häntä.

*****

Oli siis määrätty, että Kautisten pojan oli kuoltavakin

kaksinkertaiseen syntiin.

Hän oli suudellut nunnaa ja rakasti sen lisäksi toista.

Kulhian tytär

Muutamana räntäisenä joulukuun päivänä alkaa Kulhian tytär niin

sanotun vaelluksensa.
 Kulhian kartanonväki sitä ei pidä niinkään ihmeenä. Jos Kulhian
tytär tahtoo kulkea, niin hänellä on siihen kieltämätön oikeus.
Sitäpaitsi: eikö juuri edellispostissa ollut saapunut tieto Kautisten
pojan kuolemasta. Ja että poika oli kuollut kaukana vieraalla maalla,
luostarissa. Se oli siis Kautisten pojan loppu, eikäpä sitä
muunlaiseksi hänen kohdalleen juuri voinut ajatellakaan.

Kun siis Kulhian kartanon tytär lähtee kävelemään, ei mikään

kohta kartanon ulkonaisessa elämässä osoita muuttumista.

Kartanon rouva sanoo vain:

"Ota kovasti yllesi, ettet vilustu."

Ja patruuna tokaisee:

"Ottaisit hevosen… Ilmakin sellainen, että hirvittää… Et nyt

parempaa kävelypäivää keksinyt…"

Huolenpito Kulhian tyttärestä ei siis millään tavalla ole vähentynyt.

Mutta Kulhian tytär vastaa vain, etteipä hän vilustu. Ja mitäpä hän
hevosellakaan, vaivaa vain ajamisessa.

Hän on ennenkin kulkenut näitä samoja teitä, niitä, jotka lähtevät

Kulhian puistokujasta ja vievät Kautisten tienhaaraan, kiertävät sitten
Kirkkojärven ja Linnan tilukset ja palaavat Saarijoen lehdon ja
myllyntammen ohi Kulhian vainioita reunustavaan puistikkoon.
Kulhian patruunan tytär on ainakin ollut vaalea, mutta nyt harvat
vastaantulijat arvelevat ohitse päästyään, että hän on käynyt
entistäänkin vaaleammaksi. Ja toiset sanoivat:

"Näittekös sen silmiä, ne ovat tulleet vieläkin sinisemmiksi".