By David Chase
Editor’s Note: The images discussed in this blog are my selections from a series of photos by Monik Flores combined with excerpts from the text of a poem by Megan Kim. Shown at Wheaton College (IL), the photos were designed to interrupt the flow of normal activity in the space where they were exhibited.
Flores states: “In engaging this work, we want people to be forced to confront the presence of these photo-poems when they are installed (whether that be ducking, walking around, etc.). Some of the text on these images [is] also less legible than others [sic]. They require the viewer to stop and look more closely. The pervading silence around anti-Asian violence is subverted on a very physical level, as the images impose themselves in the middle of people’s routines.”
I have followed the convention of naming the artworks based on the text of the image, in absence of another title. If the artists provide a title for the artwork(s), I will update the post with a corrected title. With that in mind, Reclaim Magazine is pleased to bring a retrospective on “So Alive When I’m With Us.”
“If I Say Something True About Us”
The text in this image divides the two women’s faces from each other, echoing the sentiment it expresses: “Wouldn’t I still be more or less alone?” The woman with the closed eyes in the background is blurred, with the focus on the woman in the foreground; this “introverted” (inward-focused) expression on the woman in the background seems to imply that others’ words can reach us—and perhaps even change us—but we are ultimately alone in our own body and mind. This is further reinforced by the gaze of the woman that confronts the viewer with the question: are we able to connect to each other?
In writing on the exhibition, Megan Kim stated: “To work in co-creation with another woman of color, someone who also lives within particular marginalizations, is to threaten the ways in which whiteness would strive to divide us.” If this is the internal logic of the artwork, then the idea of having white text between the two women of color is an embodiment of the idea of whiteness “striving to divide us.” Perhaps written words as a way of knowing and expressing truth (as opposed to images, for instance), are sometimes what White people demand, but the interplay of words and images creates an in-between space where more than one possibility of expression and comprehension exists. The women exist in the same photographic space, both dressed similarly, and both in physical contact with each other as expressions of unity or shared experience that might transcend their individual isolation. The rhetorical question is deconstructed by the other elements of the image, leaving the viewer with a sense of ambiguity and tension.
“So Much of Our Fate”
This string, connecting the fingers of the different people in the image, is reminiscent of the child’s game “cat’s cradle” and of a spider web.
Kim writes: “rooted firmly in the dirt of white supremacy and empire, how little our present moment feels malleable.” This is not the only artwork I have seen exploring the sense of feeling trapped in the present moment by forces beyond our control. Indeed, that is a hallmark of globalization: this sense that there are sweeping forces beyond anyone’s direct control. Yet, these forces are not neutral. People can exploit others by taking advantage of the seemingly random circumstances that arise from global interactions.
We can look to headlines to see this phenomenon in action. From school shootings to anti-Asian violence, there is a sense in which the complex web of connections among people creates unforeseeable consequences. While we know that gun violence and anti-Asian violence are societal problems, it is often tragically in retrospect that we see the clues of what the perpetrator had planned via their online history or personal interactions leading up to the act of violence. On top of that, we can feel caught up in the sweep of history. Where we are born and how we are treated—with privilege or with prejudice—seems like the result of choices made by people we will never meet, whose decisions we cannot directly influence. For example, do the words of a politician or public figure encourage an atmosphere of prejudice and implicitly or explicitly condone violence against others based on race, gender, or ethnicity? If so, what can we do to blunt that impact?
On the other hand, we may be connected to people who can advance our cause or who can support us—again seemingly through the mysterious workings of the world system. The ambiguity of this image is that we have no way to judge whose hands are holding the strings that connect us. Additionally, some of the fingers seem tangled in the strings, while others seem to loosely grasp them, prompting further reflection on the theme of the image: are these people caught in these connections or free to let go of them and take them up at will? A sense of ambiguity continues to pervade the images.
“Death Through Silence”
This image seems like a vigil for the dead, evoking tragic scenes in the aftermath of anti-Asian violence. “Death through silence hasn’t been remedied” could be understood several ways. One approach is that this act of mourning—while necessary—does not alone address the causes of violent death. Perhaps this references the sadly familiar trajectory of collective mourning: we have vigils and mourn the dead, some people advocate for change, while others contend that now is not the time for political action but grief, and then we move on—willingly or not. And we repeat this in the face of another tragedy.
But there is another silence. What seems more insidious is the silence of those whom the violence does not touch. As viewers of the image, we are outside of the situation of mourning looking on.
We can see the barren background of the image and confront the somber expressions of the women holding the candles, holding the vigil. The word “death” is strongly associated with the barren background, and “silence” with the candle that I take to symbolize mourning. The problem that “hasn’t been remedied” seems associated with red: a color of two of the candles, but also a color that trails off as a piece of fabric to the side of the image. This red is not contained to this image, but spills over into other parts of the image, seeming to extend beyond the image. The blue candle is held above this red fabric, perhaps symbolizing a kind of hope. Just as the violence, symbolized by the red fabric, spills over beyond the image, so too must our response go beyond one single period of mourning into some form of action and speaking out.
This speaking out could take on several forms from “If you see something, say something” reporting to advocating for legal change or calling out prejudice in those around us. Further, I am reminded of John Donne’s: “Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” If we truly love our neighbor, including our neighbor who may not look like us or speak the same language as us, we can choose not to be silent, but to attempt a remedy.
“Protecting With My Flimsy Will”
“Protecting with my flimsy will all the fortune that is and is not yet ours” seems like a companion to the statement: “so much of our fate is luck” and the image evokes the “Death Through Silence” image.
We have the same barren background as the “Death” image, but there is a bit of green in it. Further, there are only two people, instead of three. Does this indicate a death, or does it perhaps refer to the idea of those tenuous connections of that string in the image about fate? Or even the idea of being alone despite articulating the truth about “us?”
Here the candles are blue and white, which I would interpret as an iteration on the theme of hope. The women’s expressions are neutral, which again suggests an ambiguity about the whole experience of being Asian American and the ways in which, as Kim puts it, “the anti-Asian racism and violence we see now is neither new nor unexpected.”
The will of the women in the image is connected to the idea of luck or fortune, in the same way that the previous image observes that the fate of Asian Americans is contingent and based largely on luck. The idea of “fortune” in this image implies that the women have gained something worth keeping, even if by chance. And there may be more to come, that which is “not yet ours.” This seems like a statement of hope for the future.
Considering the future orientation of this piece, I cannot help but wonder if the three candles are for three people again. But my initial supposition that perhaps someone had died and/or left is less relevant than the idea that perhaps someone has yet to arrive, a future generation of Asian American perhaps. The third candle in the foreground of the image seems positioned near the womb. Whether this is to imply literal motherhood or a more symbolic nurturing or protecting of life via the “flimsy will,” there is the suggestion of what is to come.
Conclusion: “So Alive When I’m With Us”
What follows is the full text of the poems from which the words of the various photographs are drawn. I hope that my exploration of the images provides readers with a framework with which to explore the poems.
--David Chase
“So Alive When I’m With Us”
There is no widely recognized
Oriental Jane Doe.
Signs and symbols:
ugly fog
smashed candles
camptowns
ghost money.
Death through silence
hasn’t been remedied.
I forget that too.
We take for granted
intimately familiar geopolitical tensions,
linguistic concerns:
Lotus Blossoms
Dragon Ladies.
So much of our fate is luck.
You can’t un-see that.
In other words in an unspoken way,
she walked down the street
historically enough.
It made her who she was.
I cried
to Asian women, not for.
It doesn’t really matter.
I confess—I never believed the dead could listen to the living.
In the future
What would you want to build?
Your own body
deeply troubling, sometimes deadly.
What would you want to build?
The body I inhabit.
The misfortune of doing so in America.
What would you want?
A flicker of homecoming.
To be more than a moment.
The body I inhabit so alive, when I’m with us.
We’re not going to go back.
We're trying to be right now.
I Said I was Going to Write About Joy as We Are Knifed, Raped, Pushed, Beaten
“To Asian women, not for—there’s no speaking for us” —R.O. Kwon
I could write you a scene we both know: two girls,
whose first identities are daughters,
bent over bowls of broth. The space between them
pulled thin and soft as a noodle. Metaphor of the steam
rising, mingling over their heads. But I lied
when I said I’ve been thinking about our joy.
I’ve mostly been thinking about fear. My own.
How I’m tired of giving it new rooms to sleep in.
I want to write about my want. That hearty survivor,
its many tails streaming unspoken
possibilities up into clouds that move like stallions,
racing low over Lake Michigan. My want is searching
for the invisible. For the wind, all psychopomp
and shrieking between highrises, dislodging
a century’s debris into city streets—its swirling ghosts,
its grip on you and me. Who could withstand
the galloping galeforce of history, its taste
for destruction, more formidable than any desire?
The lake is a convenient image: it mirrors
our tides, our containment, our freezes and thaws,
the fraying of our shores, our selves as habitats
for invasive species. And water has a memory
even longer than our bodies’. But we are not lakes,
to each other (and now I’m speaking
to you) we are not mirrors. I could try to describe
our shared features, your myriad specifics.
Dodging potholes down the boulevard,
changing the papers in the parrot’s cage.
If I say something true about us,
wouldn’t I still be more or less alone?
Look, I love you, (and sometimes that helps.)
I could write us into fear and rage, twin bears
that hibernate and wake. But here I’ll
pray: May those bears wake hungry. May our laughter
greet the day like an avalanche. May I open
my palms loudly, an offering with voice.
Protecting with my flimsy will all the fortune
that is and is not yet ours. For you,
I will peel the pith from every orange.
Title Photo by Ashley Byrd on Unsplash
David Chase is an adjunct professor of art appreciation and art history. He is also a stay-at-home-dad of two kids. As such, he reads story books, cooks, cleans, chauffeurs, and more! In his spare time, he likes to read, draw, and go for runs or hikes. Weather permitting, camping and kayaking with the family are also fun. Weather not permitting, a museum or a library will do just fine.