I’m always touched by Jennifer Ling Datchuk's ceramic work, so much so that a collection of her pieces inspired me to write an essay, “Half and Both: On Color and Subject/Object Tactility,” which was just published in “Performances of Contingency: Feminist Relationality and Asian American Studies After the Institution,” a special issue of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. I'm so grateful to Summer Kim Lee and Vivian Huang, the issue's editors who handled my piece with tremendous vision and generosity.
In the essay, I use Datchuk's work on porcelain as a touchstone to think about Asian femininity, the subject/object "divide," mixed race subjectivity, touch, and color. I consider Datchuk's racially motivated pieces with my own mixed race in mind, which is to say, the piece interweaves theories of object life and ornamentalism with intimate relation to my life. I ask us to pay special attention to the "and" in subject and object. Rather that the "or," and inhabits a tactile and adhesive quality that comes close to the way I understand racial mixture.
If you’d like to read it, contact me and I'll be happy to send you a pdf.
In the essay, I use Datchuk's work on porcelain as a touchstone to think about Asian femininity, the subject/object "divide," mixed race subjectivity, touch, and color. I consider Datchuk's racially motivated pieces with my own mixed race in mind, which is to say, the piece interweaves theories of object life and ornamentalism with intimate relation to my life. I ask us to pay special attention to the "and" in subject and object. Rather that the "or," and inhabits a tactile and adhesive quality that comes close to the way I understand racial mixture.
If you’d like to read it, contact me and I'll be happy to send you a pdf.
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