TANS ANTS TANS ANTS
2023
TANS/ ANTS/TANS/ ANTS
2021
mix media
A mountain range above and a network of tunnels and underground chambers housing a series of fimo portraits of important artists, musicians, sports people and writers that I happen to share a surname with.
The work builds around questions of cooperatives, nepotism, kinship selection and eusociality in social superorganisms like ants and humans. The combination of Chinese Clans Houses as highly political resource-sharing ecosystems tied by spiritual, economic and regional relations.
I wanted to reflect upon traditional patrilineal clan structures and use the work to offer additional forms of kin “worship” that has room for matriarchal and queer lineage and can act laterally and forward in time. What does it mean that we all become ancestors?
The work builds around questions of cooperatives, nepotism, kinship selection and eusociality in social superorganisms like ants and humans. The combination of Chinese Clans Houses as highly political resource-sharing ecosystems tied by spiritual, economic and regional relations.
I wanted to reflect upon traditional patrilineal clan structures and use the work to offer additional forms of kin “worship” that has room for matriarchal and queer lineage and can act laterally and forward in time. What does it mean that we all become ancestors?
Unruly Kinships
Temporary Gallery CCA Cologne
3 February – 30 April 2022
Curated by:
Kris Dittel and Aneta Rostkowska
Jay Tan is a professional poker player based in Hong Kong. I know about her, because for many years, every time I googled myself, her name came up as the first entry. I also love the idea of playing poker as a job.
Kelly Tan is a Malaysian professional golfer. She started playing golf at 12 years old and has an average driving distance of 251.82 yards. I was surprised how much you can earn as a not-super-famous pro golfer. My Dad’s a big golf fan and I have lots of memories of him taking me and my brother to the golf range trying to get us interested in it. He suggested featuring her in the landscape, so that’s mostly why she’s here.
Margaret Leng Tan is a composer and toy piano virtuoso. A member of the “New Music” movement she was the first woman to earn a doctorate from Juliard. Her championing of unconventional instruments, her enigmatic performative style, and her sincere commitment to an elevated, focused playfulness puts her in my top ten Tans (that I’m not related to). What a legend.
Fiona Tan is a Dutch visual artist and filmmaker, with roots in Indonesia. Coincidentally, my mother’s name is Fiona Tan and it became a running joke in our family. When we were mentioned in a text together the museum had to write “no relation” after one of our names. Her 1997 film May You Live In Interesting Times traces her own inclusion in the Tan clan diaspora, exploring questions of home and belonging in relationship to the different lands where this name is present (Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, China, Australia, Indonesia). So much of this film resonated with me and when thinking about building alternative kinship and connection through clan ties she was the first person I thought of.
Amy Tan is an American author most known for her widely read novel The Joy Luck Club (1989), which was subsequently adapted for film. I never finished the book, but I’ve seen the film countless times. My Auntie always had it on her shelf when I was growing up and I always used to think “Ooo A Tan author!”. The film was major for me as a child. I’m actually crying now as I write this, thinking about the bit where the mothers can’t communicate what they have been through, with their daughters, because it is too painful.This silence creates another kind of pain and frustration in their daughters, even though they know they realise their mothers are mostly trying to protect them.
Erica Tan is a British artist, born in Singapore. As a younger artist, I didn’t know any artists working in the UK who had Chinese-Southeast Asian roots, so I was always curious to see what she was up to. I’ve always been interested in how she works with archives of historical female figures, as well as how she combines content and material in the exhibition - sort of a sculptural cinematic reenactment, through projection for example. Her work is quite serious, and she’s quite scholarly so the idea of making a cartoon-like figurine of her feels fun.
