Work-in-Progress: Joan Kee
Living in Detroit in the time of COVID-19 when anti-Asian prejudice is on the rise, I write about how photography can relativize racial difference so we see more than just black-and-white. Here is an image from Joo Myung-duck’s series “The Mixed Names.” Taken in South Korea in 1964, when the idea of a sovereign Korean nation was deeply rooted in the myth of a unified race and when miscegenation was illegal in America, it depicts the children of U.S. military and Korean civilians, particularly the daughters of black men and Korean women. Here the decidedly ambivalent expression goes to the heart of what makes art writing so challenging: how do we begin to describe what we see? How do we grapple with different claims to legibility? What remains concealed? What is art’s destabilizing potential within entrenched narratives based on race, nationality, or globalism?
In response to social isolation guidelines, Kresge Arts in Detroit asked Kresge Artist Fellows and Gilda Award recipients to give us a glimpse into their current and recent projects. Participating artists received stipends of $150, a quick response pivot of resources that could be implemented by the program as an immediate - albeit small level - of support to Detroit area artists.