The Body You Want

 

photos by Constance Mensh

April 14 - August 5, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, April 14, 6-8PM EST 

Asian Arts Initiative  |  1219 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19107

The Body You Want sheds light on how queer identity is shaped by and functions with the existence of sexual and gender diversity. Featuring six Asian and Asian American queer artists including Jaewon Kim, Jongbum Kim, Jason Vu, Eva Wu, Shawna Wu, and Yidan Zeng, The Body You Want explores the variable positions of Asian queer bodies through the lens of geopolitical gender norms. The exhibition investigates the ways in which each artist responds to specific cultural values in developing their own queer identity, while capturing shared experiences in the Asian Diaspora. 

This exhibition will open along with The Erotic Project. Opening reception: April 14th, 2023, 6-8pm. Register here. 

Join us at the Opening Reception of The Body You Want, AAI's Spring Season exhibition that explores the variable positions of Asian queer bodies through the lens of geopolitical gender norms, featuring six Asian and Asian American artists: Jaewon Kim, Jongbum Kim, Jason Vu, Eva Wu, Shwana Wu, and Yidan Zeng. 

The Body You Want is curated by Joyce Chung with curatorial assistance by Dominique Chua. 

PRESS

“My work as an artist and as an intellectual is about porn and art; where can they overlap, and how can we push the boundaries of art to be more accepting of porn?” said Wu. “Because at the PMA [Philadelphia Museum of Art], you see full nudes by dead men artists, but on Instagram, I can’t post a naked photo or I’ll be deleted.”

Ishii is pushing the boundaries of art and explicit sexual content by bringing Wu into her institution.

“One of the elephants in the room is that: You really don’t understand how provocative something is until your body reacts to it,” Ishii said. “For me at least, that is a good barometer of the caliber of a work: does your body react? I can’t think of a form of art that elicits a direct bodily reaction like erotica.”

“One of the most subversive parts of this already dynamic exhibits was the pornographic video installations in a separate exhibition room behind the Asian Arts Initiative’s theater room. Curated by and starring Eva Wu, who is also one of the organizers of the Hot Bits queer porn festival and using the moniker Evie Snax for their performances, the looping un-simulated films feature a variety of queer and trans BIPOC adult film performers engaging in different types of sexual play. These films stand out in the world of fabricated, very cisheteronormative big-budget studio pornographic films made with a dopamine-eating white lens and kink practices performed in a way that creates false expectations. Instead, they are sexy, appreciative of marginalized sexual intimacy without staged fetishism for the viewer, expertly visually composed, and show everything and all without needing to cover the most vulnerable of natural human expressions from what a judgmental eye may deem as “too vulgar” as commonly imposed.”

In Baby (2018), an eight-minute film in which a performer engages in something alluding to solo strip tease, Wu depicts the queer/lesbian romance in a playful yet sensuous manner, rather than the hyper-erotic, sexualized way often imposed by society.