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Identity Crisis

By Megan Driscoll

In a time when immigration and the clashing of cultures are crucial topics in the social and political arena, the question of personal identity and how we situate ourselves in the world around us has become especially poignant. In August 2006, the Elizabeth Leach gallery in Portland's Pearl District exhibited Here and Now, a presentation of four international artists whose lives have been defined by the conflict between racial and cultural heritage and their chosen homes. In a variety of media, Ken Lum, Kimsooja, Dinh Q. Lê, and Hans Haacke explore this often highly politicized struggle.

Vancouver artist Ken Lum's series, titled There is no place like Home (2004), reflects on the conflict that the word "home," normally associated with comfort and solace, can invoke. Born in Canada to a Chinese family, much of his work focuses on the experience of being raised in an immigrant family and the relationship between his inherited culture alongside the world he grew up in. There is no place like Home is comprised of six giclée prints of large photographs of individual "speakers" and their quotes, and deals with a sense of disassociation and displacement from one's home, be it a house, a city, or a country. One print features an angry-looking Chinese man shouting "I'm sick of your views about immigrants—this is our home too!" Another shows a frowning woman seated in front of off-white siding, protesting "You call this a home? This ain't no goddamn home."

"This Is Our Home Too"
© Ken Lum (2004)
Image Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery

The photograph and quote format of the series is extremely effective. Each photograph functions like a portrait of the speaker, conveying information about the individual through race, dress, and expression, which Lum captures perfectly to convey the appropriate emotion. Thus, the image of a woman saying "I'm never made to feel at home here I don't feel at home here," takes on much greater complexity via the tension in her face, her Arabic skin tone, and the blue scarf that covers her head. Lum makes it clear that, while there may be "no place like home," home is a place and a mental state that can be rendered hostile and confusing by the politics of race and social class.

Kimsooja, the only female artist in the show, takes a distinctly and deliberately feminine approach to the exploration of personal identity. Born in Korea and currently based out of New York City, Kimsooja's work looks specifically at the roles of Korean women. In "The Seven Wishes" (2004), her contribution to Here and Now, she utilizes the intricate embroidery that she learned from her mother to create seven embroidered tapestries. Five of the seven images depict delicate scenes of flora and fauna, reminiscent of traditional Korean embroidery; the other two are simply made up of brightly colored graphic stripes and hexagons. The series contrasts decorative elements of Korean and American visual culture, highlighting the incursion of decoration, a traditionally feminine form of image making, into the art world, which has so long been dominated by masculine imagery and ideals.

"The Seven Wishes IV"
© Kimsooja (2004)
Image Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery

"The Seven Wishes VI"
© Kimsooja (2004)
Image Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery

Here and Now returns to photographic imagery with Dinh Q. Lê's series Vietnam Destination for the New Millennium (2005). Lê was born in Vietnam, and moved to the United States with his family as a child. The Destination series, a set of rectangular photographs printed with phrases in the brush script common to souvenir postcards, deals with the artist's conflict over his nostalgia for his home country. "So Sorry," a photograph of three young women at what appears to be a bus stop in Vietnam, declares "So sorry to hear that you are still not over us. Come back to Vietnam for closure!" The image plays on the metaphor between woman and country, and the anxiety shared by severing the relationship to one's lover and homeland. Another image in the series, "Come Back to Saigon," politicizes the yearning for Vietnam. The photograph, which depicts a crowd of Vietnamese people on scooters stopped at an intersection, appeals to Lê to "Come back to Saigon! We promised we will not spit on you." By using the prewar name for Ho Chi Minh City, Lê reminds us of the colonialist impulse that has driven the West's relationship with Vietnam, as well as his desire to return as an American, the promise not to "spit on you" hinting at lingering feelings of guilt and shame.

The final piece in the show, Hans Haacke's "Mission Accomplished," brings the focus back to the artist's conflict with his adopted country. Haacke, who was born and raised in Germany and studied art on a Fulbright in Philadelphia, currently lives and works in New York City. His work focuses on the relationship between politics and art, particularly, in recent years, the political fallout of 9/11 and subsequent American wars. "Mission Accomplished," a play on Bush's infamous 2003 declaration of the end of the Iraq war, depicts a torn half of the stars section of the American flag, elegantly mounted on a white background in a thin black frame, with the other half of the stars on the floor beneath. The piece highlights the colonialism inherent in a war of occupation, showing the accomplishment of our mission as a violent intrusion upon the symbols that represent each American state, and making an ironic reference to the freedom that the American flag—and the Iraq war—supposedly represent.

The works of each artist in Here and Now all challenge the viewer to consider what home and self mean in the current political climate. By presenting the views of immigrants on the subject of personal and political identity, the exhibition forcefully highlights the social and political conflicts that arise in the meeting of two cultures. Amidst current events such as the American struggle over immigration law, the Iraq war, and the war between Israel and Hezbollah, this issue takes on a new urgency, and these four artists' treatment of such an important topic demonstrates the important relationship between politics and the arts.