Super Great Expired Film Giveaway. And The Winner Is…

I received close to 150 entries for the film giveaway. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share some very honest, considerate thoughts. Thank you also to the one entrant who commented on my “killer dental hygiene” but flattery will not work on me! And, thank you to the entrant from Scotland who graciously offered to have the Loch Ness Monster swim up the Hudson to eat my “imperialist yankee self.”

As I tried to select a recipient for the film, I kept returning to one entry again and again.

And so…

Congratulations to Jane Tam!

About the work:

Foreigners in Paradise

My grandmother told me she had plans to go with my grandfather to pick ginkgo nuts at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn during a gloomy and rainy day and I was more than welcome to join her. The nuts have all fallen to the ground due to the rain and wind so we better pick them before somebody else does. With a cart rolling behind us, I climbed the hill with them behind me, capturing my grandfather helping her walk up the wet and grassy knoll. The glistening yellow ginkgo nuts were like gold, against the wet and black ground and overwhelmed the space my grandmother inhabited.

The overwhelming mix of identities my Chinese American home possess began in this series with a portrait of one of the many tin-foiled stovetops my family installs. Never realizing how odd it might look to the non-Chinese population, the enlargement of such a portrait did register alien to my American identity when I was no longer living in my childhood home. Exploring the relationships my grandparents have with their American landscape and traditional Chinese mentality, the portraits and spaces dictate a décor of their own.

The inherited decoration from Guangdong, China to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn is encapsulated in the homes and in the people. With the mix of visual language in these liminal spaces, the iconography of the Chinese is marked by its specificity to the culture. The enclosures create a diversion to light in the household, making the home a place that seems to be “stuck” between two worlds.

The weavings of different Eastern and Western idioms hold the generational conflict for my Chinese American identity. The series has been a therapeutic study of my family through the American landscape, how it can be seen as a paradise but difficult to call a home. It is the understanding of the knots that tie into the hybrid culture of being Chinese American. The generations of children, like myself, born in America are caught in a complex mix of old and new ideas. Foreigners in Paradise continues on to seek the intricate identities woven into a Chinese American home.

I selected Jane, not just for the strength of her work (which she says was influenced by Larry Sultan), but also because of something I found while looking at her website and blog:

Where Do I Fit In

Recently I was asked where do I fit in the contemporary art world and how do I contribute to it. These questions threw me off my chair immediately and I was scratching my head nonstop as I tried to think of answers. I don’t even remember what I said anymore and I might have spewed out some verbal garbage about using my photography as a way to discuss issues pertaining to Asian American ethnography and family politics. Add in a lot of “um(s)” and “uhh(s)” into the mix and I probably said something super water-downed.

This is the difference between getting a BFA versus a MFA. During the four years as an undergrad, all you are focused on is making work, experimenting, succeeding, failing, and by the fourth year, you’ll be lucky to realize what you want to do for the future. Professors guide you through trials and tribulations about experimenting and do not expect you to think about where you fit into contemporary art history. Hell, who are you to even think you can make it into a history book? You just need to work and be selfish. Just think and do your work. Figure out how you contribute to art later.

After a few years of sending jpgs and prints over and over again to competitions and contests, it hit me early on that photography is not all about me, it’s also about the person viewing the work. How do I match up with others? What am I lacking? But I’ve struggled and still struggle to find out how to my work fits into photography history. Sometimes it’s easy to ride the Chinese art wave but this is so one-dimensional and I hate it.

Like a confused teenager going through puberty, it’s always been about how and where do I fit in. When am I obviously Chinese, when am I uniquely American, female, young, old, smart, naive, successful, not up to par, etc. When I enter contests or competitions and have other Asian American work against mine, are we too similar? Is there only space for one? Talk about insecurities, huh?

I have a long way to go and doubt always cross my mind. My competitive nature keeps me grounded and I hope these questions of fitting in don’t stop. I believe the day I figure it out is the day I stop questioning. I’m sure I have other open-ended, head-scratching questions ahead of me in the near future so I should keep this post in mind and not stumble into the pitfalls of verbal garbage.

It was very clear to me that this photographer was not just making pretty pictures, but actively trying to answer some important questions. I also loved her realization that it isn’t always the answer that’s important, but often the search for an answer.

See more of Jane’s work at her site HERE.