Art exhibit displays racist, sexist ideas of Asian women

  Nicole Seymour Seymour thinks UCLA’s
Nick Lowe makes rad art. E-mail her at [email protected].
Click Here for more articles by Nicole Seymour

Recently, the Museum of Contemporary Art inaugurated its new
MOCA gallery at the Pacific Design Center near Beverly Hills with
“Superflat,” a collection of modern Japanese art
organized by Takashi Murakami. While the exhibit contains a lot of
thought-provoking and original work, it sadly seems to cater to
sexist and racist artistic tropes, especially the idea of the
docile, exploitable “China doll,” without examining or
explaining these influences and images through the art itself or
through any accompanying material.

One of the centerpieces of the exhibit is a series of dolls
whose figures are molded after the familiar Japanese anime
characters. And, in the same way that those cartoons often show
female characters in physically exaggerated, degrading manners, the
dolls are all fully or partially nude and posed lasciviously. One
doll is twisted in such a manner that the viewer can see the word
“IN” and an arrow which points up toward her vagina,
painted on her pubic area. The obvious pornographic nature of these
dolls is undeniable, but this is not the disturbing aspect ““
it is the notions behind it.

While one could debate that the dolls (perhaps unwittingly) show
that much pornography renders women doll-like, these figures, in
their connection to anime, exist as simply another medium through
which to depict women in a degrading manner. The message and arrow
also suggest that to be fucked is the very function of a woman
““ and to be fucked by a man; the heterosexist idea therein
also suggests that women are objects for men, not partners to other
women or single entities.

Moving through the exhibit, I found a series of drawings that
were even more disturbing. This series depicts pre-pubescent girls
in flirtatious, sexualized poses. They coyly look at the viewer
while topless, they look astonished but amused as their skirts are
flipped up, and they stick their fingers in their mouths like
babies while splayed out, exposing their underpants. And in all of
these depictions, not only are the girls disempowered by their
presentation ““ being viewed, on display ““ but also by
their behavior regarding this presentation; they are surprised,
guileless.

  Illustration by JENNY YURSHANSKY/Daily Bruin

While of course these drawings cannot be categorized as child
pornography (or criticized for being such, as obviously no children
were involved), the connection with that kind of power dynamic is
undeniable. The girls are in extremely stylized postures of
submission and sexualization, while the greatest visual and
visceral thrust of the art is the emphasis on their extreme youth,
as evidenced through their lack of breasts, their childish gestures
and their clothes.

The series that I found most offensive, however, were those
pieces on the final wall of the gallery. One drawing shows a young
girl melting, her face frozen in horror, her breasts in two melted
piles on the ground. Another depicts a cute, cartoonish-faced child
with the body of a caterpillar, which bears 20 pairs of large
breasts and an exposed, dripping vagina. Perhaps the most grotesque
is a drawing that shows a very young girl with nonsensically large
breasts being attacked by a giant octopus, whose tentacles are
squeezing her body as well as violating her sexually.

Whether they mean to or not, all of these images from the
“Superflat” exhibit unfortunately go beyond mere sexism
in their unrealistic, manipulated conceptions of females (without a
single sexualized or even nude representation of a male) to the
intersection of sexism and racism.

Unfortunately, because of varying reasons, many aspects of both
American and Japanese culture view the Japanese female as an
exotic, objectified and often infantilized Other. The stereotypes
abound, from the images and text in pornography to film to songs
like 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny,” painting Asian
women as docile, accommodating and ready-and-willing sex toys.
These portrayals make racist equations between being Asian and
being weak, and sexist equations between being weak and being
desirable.

By choosing to present art that utilizes or at least plays off
of these sorts of concepts about Asian females,
“Superflat” only reinforces and perpetuates them.
Further, these portrayals can, intentionally or not, be taken to be
a validation of some of these beliefs; racist and sexist ideals
about Asian women that exist in American media and Western culture
are pointedly not challenged in this forum, the same one that
ironically and unfortunately has been billed as a representation of
Asian art.

Beyond simply the physical exhibit, the “Superflat”
catalogue sold at the gallery is chock-full of images that
endlessly repeat these ideas of the titillating, helpless
schoolgirl (the schoolgirl being one persona that is recycled
throughout the entire catalog), the sexualized child and the
sexually submissively Asian woman ““ from Aya Takano’s
falling and contorted naked female children to Chiho Aosima’s
young cheerleader splayed upside down to display her crotch to the
viewer.

“Superflat” does contain much valuable, innovative
work ““ at least half of it does not reflect the mentioned
problematic artistic themes. Instead it offers things like
groovisions’ “Chappies” a collection of
identical, life-sized automaton workers that seem to be commenting
on the ritualized, regimented Japanese ““ or is it American?
““ social and work culture, and Yoshitomo Nara’s
paintings of big-headed, slightly sinister-looking little girls,
which subvert notions of childhood “goodness.”

But what would be truly subversive in this exhibit, and in art
altogether, would be to forego depictions and notions of Asian
women and women in general as witless, precocious sex toys, and to
refuse to glorify the artistic sexualization of children. What
“Superflat” makes obvious is the need to produce an
effective counter-dialogue that conceives women as full-grown,
autonomous adults, and does not limit this conception to white
women. As it is, though, much of it differs little from typical
pornography, which is often inherently subjective and
race-based.

This is not to say the relation of any of these art pieces to
pornography warrants censorship, or that either genre should
automatically be disparaged on the basis of its sexual nature.
Nothing could be farther from the truth; pornography does have
cultural value (even if it is only as a reflection of its given
society), and sexualized depictions can have much to say about
gender roles and norms.

What is truthful, however, is that much of the art in
“Superflat” adds nothing to dialogues about such
important issues as gender, sexuality, gaze, subjectivity or the
ethics of representation. It simply capitalizes on its shock factor
while furthering tired misogynist, racist and imperialistic ideas.
But, lucky for it, “Superflat” can validate itself by
coming in an “artistic” ““ and thus socially
viable ““ package.