Arlan Huang and Howie Chen on Art and Activism
In All About Love, bell hooks offers her insights on generosity as a core pillar of the kind of love that builds true communities. “A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming,” she writes. “In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers — the experience of knowing we always belong.”
Consciously or not, Arlan Huang seems to have lived by that tenant for the last five decades. In addition to his own work as an artist, activist, and owner of Squid Frames in Brooklyn, he has lovingly and fastidiously been collecting the artwork and ephemera of his friends and colleagues since the burgeoning days of the Asian American movement. Up through August 27th, part of Huang’s collection is currently on view at Pearl River Mart in an exhibition titled “Just Between Us,” organized by Danielle Wu, Howie Chen, and Think!Chinatown.
Among the works included in the show are photographs by Corky Lee and others documenting members of Basement Workshop from the ‘70s. There are letters of encouragement and watercolors from Huang’s aunt, Edith Lew; countless silk screened posters designed by Huang and other artists including Tomie Arai for protests. There is a copy of the 1972 anthology, Yellow Pearl, prints by Martin Wong and Nina Kuo, drawings by Huang’s wife, Lillian Ling, ephemera from Godzilla, and recent paintings by Kazuko Miyamoto and Alex Paik.
In “Just Between Us,” Huang’s collection represents a living archive and record of Asian American relationships and community in NYC. It stands as a record of our constantly evolving conversations and concerns. “Arlan’s archive makes space for ‘Asian America’ as one of constant flux and open contention, particularly among Asian Americans ourselves,” writes Wu in the exhibition’s catalog. “It is unified by neither aesthetics nor politics. It is limited in scope and scale, tethered to place and time, fallible to memory, and feels woefully incomplete. Yet, this small sliver of an archive tells the story of how an entrusted space for Asian American ideas, culture, and art might not have been a museum or an art gallery, but rather shepherded between people.”
Also from the catalog is the following excerpt from Chen’s interview with Huang discussing Huang’s involvement in Basement Workshop and the crucial challenge of cultivating your own voice:
Arlan Huang: Through the Asian Coalition I met Min Matsuda. We silkscreened the poster for the next March. She introduced me to AAA (Asian Americans For Action). They were mostly Nisei women of my mother’s generation organizing anti-imperialism activities. The group included Kazu Iijima (Chris’s mother), Min Matsuda (Karl’s mother), and Mary Kochiyama.
After the Health Fair and a few marches, Chris, Nobuko, and Charlie held a concert at the Japanese Buddhist Church up on Riverside Drive and 105th St. in Manhattan. There I met the church kids Alan Okada, Teddy Yoshikami, Nancy and Elsie Okada, Takashi Yanagida, and Larry Hama. After the concert Rocky Chin and Terry Dofu announced if anyone was interested in working on a project publishing the music and lyrics of Chris, Nobuko, and Charlie, there was going to be a meeting in Chinatown at a place called Basement Workshop.
Word got out and on the day of the meeting, a basement in Chinatown was packed to standing room outside the front door. A person named Danny Yung greeted everyone.The first thing Rocky says is he and Terry are leaving for the West coast and would someone like to take over the planning of this pamphlet. Myself and Takashi volunteered. We became the co-coordinators of Yellow Pearl and that’s how uptown came downtown.
AH: Everyone who has some relationship with Basement has their own story. But it was the early period when the coalition was setting its tone. The glue that held everything together at that time was Chris, Joanne, and Charlie. They were performing anti-war rallies, Asian American rallies, and Chinatown activities. Through them, one was easily exposed to, for instance, the Young Lords, in an overlapping zone where different political consciousnesses, parties, and struggles intersected.
Those were heady times. The connections with Third World internationalism seemed so clear. It was more than just Chinatown.
AH: The idea that art should serve the people takes root. School is an afterthought, but I still have to pass my classes. I do not want to disappoint my parents. Even with Yellow Pearl meetings dominating five out of six days a week I managed to squeak by and get my BFA. Art school curriculum seems useless in cultural art work.
My time at Basement was one minute in the long history of Basement Workshop. But it coincided with the dawn of the Asian American Movement. It was a period that changed my life forever.
