-010 Yasmine Anlan Huang
If there is one thing that you can change in a previous project of yours, what would it be?
Image Courtesy of Wassaic Project.
This is a timely question as part of my recent job involves distributing my previous pieces to xyz exhibitions, depending on their context. Hence in no time, I know the answer to your question is the possibility to include Chinese or non-English subtitles in my early video works. To be precise, these works are Illogical Innocence (2019) and Servitude: do not believe that Google Maps (2021). It’s not about the scripts of the works or the textual elements that are untranslatable, but rather that my original intention in crafting them made it impossible for the works to properly circulate within a purely Sinophone context, or any non-English context.
The first video is about how I, or my idol persona, graduated from the Japanese idol group and navigated the new world in New York by exhibiting her vulnerability on Tinder. In the second video, a Siberian girl met her distant Shanghainese lover on a dating app. Seduced by modernity not lure, she soon died of literal algomatic disorientation.
Both projects are set against highly specific cultural backdrops, where the characters move conversationally between Japanese–English and Chinese–Russian. In the former, broken English is weaponized against my racialized girlhood; in the latter, auto-translated English mediates between Russian and Chinese. As a result, only English speakers can fully grasp both works in their entirety, leaving little space for those outside the Anglophone world to intervene. Imagine showing these works in South Korea: in the first, miscommunication in English ceases to function as a weapon precisely because it communicates; in the second, the audience “understands” only at the cost of erasing the mediation that lies at the core of the piece.
As my practice develops, I sometimes wonder whether these works, though born of fierce resistance to new environments, ultimately perpetuate the very hegemony of English they sought to contest. I should perhaps have acknowledged this contradiction earlier on, taken it into account, and paced the emotional intensity differently—so that the audience could examine this tension from outside the narrative itself. I think I did succeed in this aspect in my most recent video work, but I really wish I'd gotten a chance to do a better job in these previous works.
Illogical Innocence, Installation Shot. Sundae, Chiba JP.
Servitude do not believe that Google Maps, Installation Shot. Peckham24, Photo by Jimmi Ho.
Servitude do not believe that Google Maps, Installation Shot. Narratives, Stories, Algorithms, Rethinking Independence in Digital Times.
Servitude do not believe that Google Maps, Installation Shot. Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery.
Servitude do not believe that Google Maps, Video Still.
About Yasmine Anlan Huang:
Yasmine Anlan Huang (b. Guangzhou) is an artist and writer working in London and Hong Kong. She explores how desires within coming-of-age narratives subvert patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist expectations. Her solo and two-person shows include Magician Space (Beijing, China), Goethe-Institut Hong Kong (Hong Kong) among others. Her work has been included in Whitney Biennial 2024 (New York, US), Peckham 24 (London,UK), HART Haus (Hong Kong), Power Station of Art (Shanghai, China), and more. She has participated in multiple residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her debut book of poems and essays, Love of the Colonizer, has been published by Accent Sisters.
www.yasminehuang.com