CURATION
Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900 – 1955
AD&A Museum at UC Santa Barbara
January 25 - May 5, 2024
Border Crossings challenges previous histories of modern dance to consider how war, inequality and injustice shaped 20th century performance art. This exhibition demonstrates how exiled or marginalized artists catalyzed modern dance—its ethos, vision, and design—giving voice to crucial issues of geopolitical circumstance and structural racism.
Crossing Borders—physical, geographic, racial, artistic, spiritual—either by choice or by force, became a historical circumstance out of people's control. These crossings are woven into the grammar of "the modern" in early twentieth century dance. They are its DNA. Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900 – 1955 is organized by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Originally conceived by Ninotchka Bennahum and Bruce Robertson, the AD&A Museum presentation was curated by Ninotchka Bennahum with Rena Heinrich.
Dismantling Orientalism: This Is Not a True Story
USC Pacific Asia Museum
March 31 - September 3, 2023
In 1978, cultural and literary theorist Edward Said described Orientalism as “a system of thought and a way of seeing of ‘the East’ from the colonial gaze of ‘the West’ as mysterious, intriguing, and exotic, while at the same time primitive, despotic, and savage.” From Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 release of Dune, there are multitudes of Orientalist representations in media that range from outrageous to subtle. All are steeped in colonization and cultural oppression.
This student-led pop-up exhibition highlights artists and works of art that focus on dismantling Orientalism within the context of film, video, photography, and theater. Featuring digital media pieces, portraits, posters, production stills, and scripts, this exhibition foregrounds artists who, through the creation of subversive and empowering work, remind us of the strides made toward humanizing the representation of Asian and Asian American stories. Co-curated with USC Pacific Asia Museum, Artists at Play, USC Visions and Voices, Donatella Galella, Jenny Lin, and Rena Heinrich.