Raiding the Bull in a China Shop

Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

2022

Department

English

Abstract

This essay explores the ways that installation facilitates thinking through the conditions of possibility for the exhibition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Asian objects within the context of American homes and museums. The racialization and deracination of collected Asian objects and excluded Asian people, as explored in Triple Canopy and CFGNY’s (Concept Foreign Garments New York’s) installations for the Rhode Island School of Design Museum’s Raid the Icebox Now and Lloyd Suh’s play The Chinese Lady invites a reexamination of subjectivity and objecthood, along with attendant assumptions about agency. By turning to “subjectness” discourse and Asiancy, following the work of Kandice Chuh and Tina Chen alongside performance studies methodology, the project rethinks the histories and possibilities for objects and subjects of Asian Americanist critique.

Publication Title, e.g., Journal

Theatre Journal

Volume

74

Issue

3

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