For my Asian American Culture class we were required to attend at least one of the APAture events that were being held for 10 days in San Francisco. APAture celebrates and displays Asian Pacific American heritage to everyone in the form of art, music, performance, and more. I went to the closing event for APAture today and it offered a COMICS AND ZINE EXPO. It wasn’t as I expected because in my head I was picturing a big floor filled with all these animated pictures of heroes and villains, like a typical comic convention.. But this place was small, like a studio where you can take literally 30 steps and you’ve already seen the whole room. But within those 30 steps, I was able to enrich my eyes with the most individualistic pictures.
I’ll just walk you through what I experienced there and because art is left up to your imagination, I’ll let you guys into what I felt and thought when I saw these pictures. Okay, when you first walk up the stairs you come face to face with a tree. It was basically water-colored paint smudges on current news paper clippings forming this tree. Covering articles about death, rape, and the depression that is about to take forth, I think this tree symbolized how the world needs to be united and be a family to support each other through the hard times that are about to come through.
Walking into the actual expo room, the table full of comics was the first thing that caught my eye. I got to meet Hellen Jo who is the main artist of Jin and Jam comics. Although I didn’t get to talk to her personally about her comics because she was doing an interview for APAture, I got to read some of her work and let me just say, they’re really BLUNT. The main theme of her comic strips that I came across was sexuality. She approached the subject as a natural occurrence in life, and I’m thinking that’s what she would like to portray to the world. Jin & Jam 1, published by Sparkplug Comic Books will debut at the Alternative Press Expo this year, on November 1 & 2.
The next picture I enjoyed was this fingerprint made up of Japanese stamps. To me, this taught me that a person’s identity and culture never leaves a person; it is literally integrated in a person’s body. And this is what I’m coming to find. With this Asian American culture class I’m becoming more curious with not just my own, but different Asian cultures.
The next art work that intrigued me was the tanks that were made out of fuzzy material. They were lined up and leading to a giant explosion looking piece that was made up of these individual tanks. Along with this theme, there were shoes, spray painted camouflage and laid across fake grass. It brought me back to what I learned in class through the culture presentations and how each culture experienced some hardship along the way.
Lastly, my favorite artwork out of the entire gallery was a box you stick your head into. It was attached to the ceiling so you’d have to climb up there and when you look around inside that tiny box, it made me feel I was in a wheat field of some sort, the mirrors creating this vast image of never ending wonder of what the world can offer a person. I guess this is how people who dedicated their life to working in the fields felt.
I just wish they had a friendlier environment because everyone there was busy fixing things. I would have liked to be confronted with information about each artwork because I would’ve liked to have known what each artist was thinking and feeling when making their artwork. It’s okay because that’s what art galleries are all about, interpreting your own thoughts. This APAture event basically tied everything I learned so far in class. The whole gallery had themes about what Asian American culture is all about; family, sexuality, finding one’s identity, and past suffering. Although before I left, one person came up to me and started explaining APAture’s organization and how to get involved in it. And yes, I did join the mailing list (=
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