Walk on by

This is an audio recording of the catalogue essay written by Jinghua Qian for the Nexus Arts gallery exhibition, Walk on by by Jake Yang. The essay is titled Askance. 

When I talk to Jake, it’s just a few days into the new year, The Year of the Snake. It’s in that period of time when you’re not supposed to cut your hair, though this is a rule I only learned about a few years ago. I don’t usually like rules but I like rituals and superstitions, especially those I don’t really believe in; there is an odd satisfaction to observing something for the sake of nothing. It’s an indulgence and I believe in that, revere it even: indulgence, pleasure, beauty, these feel like simple and infinite forms of shared prosperity. That’s what I hope the new year brings, the opportunity to waste time on beauty, whether that’s creating it or just drinking it in. On a sidenote, it’s a cliché that queers love astrology and there are lots of interesting theories as to why that is. Christopher J Lee writes in Recaps magazine that astrology has a trashy appeal precisely because it rests on dubious foundations, because it is “fragile but precious”, both “intricate and unconvincing”. And isn’t that the reputation of femininity too, under patriarchy? Intricate and unconvincing. Frivolous and sentimental. Overcooked and inadequate. Sweet’n’sour. 

I see this in Jake’s iconographic portraits, a celebration of femininity, beauty and resilience, an expression of cultural confidence as a queer Chinese Australian, but also evidence of the turmoil of carrying that double consciousness, as African-American thinker W.E.B. DuBois termed it, that means you’re always aware of how you’re perceived in white society. As Jake writes, the Asian figure is “undesirable, foreign, peripheral and un-Australian”. To defend oneself against these narratives feels fraught, fragile and precious; there is a hair’s breadth sometimes between countering stereotypes and inviting them to settle in your psyche, and what can you say about any of this that wouldn’t be read as frivolous, narcissistic, and shallow, too invested in appearances, kinda cringe? These are some of the ready racial stereotypes of the east in western culture, that it is decorative and decadent. Though perhaps I am projecting my own anxieties about visibility and gender too. I’m reminded of the famous John Berger quote: “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.” Double consciousness, double happiness, dubious pleasure. Take what you can get and share it. 

In the Chinese zodiac, Jake is a Rabbit, and so am I, albeit 12 years older. Sidenote, I’m convinced that the Chinese zodiac is mainly a covert, euphemistic way to ask someone’s age – it lacks appeal even as a dubious determinant of personality because the spans of each sign are too large. In any case, Jake is a Rabbit, and he depicts himself as such in the arms of his family – his loving mum, sister and nanna – in Nurture, a work painted on the back of embroidered decorative placemats from his nanna’s collection that have been stitched together and hardened with clear acrylic primer. The colour palette of the found textiles flow through the exhibition – beige, green, navy blue, pops of red, and a distinctive yellowy-green tone Jake uses liberally in reclamation of yellow skin. It’s a colour that appeals to me because it reads as queer and unsettling. It feels botanical, domestic, hardy, oblique. What springs to mind is that ugly-beautiful word that described us in the Linnean racial classifications: sallow. Say it slow and soft and it sounds like a term of endearment. 

Hair – lush, spooling, unruly hair – features in many of Jake’s works in this exhibition. There’s the floor piece Womf, beckoning and challenging you to use it as a doormat, catching your toes between Jake’s puddling locks, weightless as smoke. There’s Flipping my goddamn hair, painted on laser-cut wood decorated with a Chinese lucky knot so this quintessential queer sass becomes a talisman for feeling yourself. There’s Serving Celestial, his self-portrait with koi fish and drifting, curling clouds that mirror the shape of his curls in the floor piece. And then there’s Eye daggers, which gives you only his eyes and a glimpse of hair. He tells me he wanted to respond to racist remarks about Asian eyes, while also suggesting eye daggers, side eye, looking askance. The almighty squint of judgement. “Sometimes that’s just the way my eyes are,” Jake says. Resting critic face. Inscrutable and scrutinising. 

Jinghua Qian, pronouns ey/eir/em is a Shanghainese writer, critic and cross-platform storyteller living in the Kulin nations. Eir work has a focus on arts, history, queerness, and China. 

 That is the end of this audio recording.