There is a Wing Yip on Oldham Road. It’s rarely called by its actual name, and to be totally honest I only found out the name through writing this. It’s more commonly referred to as the Chinese or Oriental supermarket. After yesterday’s shopping spree, I ended up leaving with Red Star Erguotou at 56% ABV, a Japanese brand of instant noodles and Daz washing powder. Clearly, it doesn’t stock exclusively Chinese groceries, but the term ‘Oriental’ doesn't do justice to the diversity of products either. The packaging designs that stared back at me were in various scripts and languages, incorporated heaps of cultural symbols specific to an assortment of places, and were complete with colour pallets sampled from numerous national flags. It was a nice change from the packaging design in Tesco.

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Just as the supermarket’s colloquial name misconstrues its range of food stuff, using the term ‘Asian’ to refer to a diversity of countries and cultures has a similar homogenising effect. The latest show at Goldsmiths University’s Hatcham Church, Goldsmiths Oriental Mart, is a response to such reductive generalisations about Asian cultures and premised on sharing the plurality of experiences of East and Southeast Asian artists. Organised by PAR/KWO/KEE collective, the show features 18 artists from Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the UK. Complete with Chinese lanterns, the space has been reimagined as an oriental mart, allowing for heterogeneous Asian cultures to sit beside one another - in the same way you would find on the shelves at Wing Yip.

 

As I entered through the automatic sliding doors, my body drew in the LED lighting and refrigerator chill. The church acoustics amplified the clamorous rattle of the wire trolley on the vinyl floor. From the nearest isle on my left, a fragment of neon pink crept into the corner of my eye. Succumbing to my social conditioning I strayed over to have a browse. In front of me was a completed puzzle, compiled of Disney princesses, K-pop Girl bands and a self-portrait of the artist, Youhah Kim titled, Girl Encyclopaedia. Each piece fitted together perfectly despite the discordant trio of images. Mounted to the right, there was a scrap of knock-off Louie Vuitton. I glanced at the label below “Xin Yi Xie, Leather pleasure”. The Louie Vuitton was part of a composition that included other patterns and prints from around the world, which had been laser cut in the style of the Chinese Shadow Puppetry - the traditional art form of the world’s largest exporter of goods. I let go of the trolley, dropped my hands to my sides and gazed up at the two works. Each in their own way and to very different effects, the artworks captured the interplay of local and global spheres of influence on both individual and national identity.

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There was a spillage on the next isle, a cluster of shattered concrete. I scanned the store for a supermarket clerk. Wiping their hands on their apron as they approached, they informed me it was Sohee Lee’s installation Upside Down. The spillage was beautiful; delicate shards were arranged touching in a perfect circle, and at its centre was a glass Korean brandy jar containing larger but equally thin shards of concrete. Presumed to be a robust material, here the concrete looked fragile. By dismantling this commonly held assumption about the properties of concrete, the piece encapsulated the premise of the whole exhibition.

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Behind the spillage there was a selection of paintings by Chih-Ying Chang, Edward Hongyi Jia and Alya Hatta. Entwined genderless bodies, a plant-like virus and gaudy alien creatures appeared to have been sloppily chucked amongst each other. It was a bit like the reduced section. After rummaging amongst the expired items, I happened on Leily Mojdehi’s textile collage, Breakfast. Giving form to the artist’s somewhat overwhelming experience of growing up between multiple cultures, the checkered table cloth overflowed with cuisines from Iran, Singapore and the UK. My mouth watered at the sight of noodle dishes, baked beans, and watermelon dripping with thread, beads and other embellishments.

 

Since food is the gateway to culture, Breakfast wasn't the only work with culinary references. Jinsun Park’s, photography series, Pleasure and Food responded to South Korea’s appearance obsessed culture dubbed ‘lookism’, by capturing moments of carefree indulgence as people tucked into meals. Kayla Lui’s, risograph prints and comic book extracts from a project titled Dailongfeng Restaurant, told a story about the shallow culture of Hong Kong’s elites. And stacked against the adjacent wall, were tofu boxes containing Ashley Hi and Amberlyn Lai’s self-published zine, TOFU (tofu capitalised). The subject of which was to illustrate the tensions between capitalist production and labouring bodies, through the images of industrially packaged but frangible fleshy tofu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By now I’d seen images of three variations of ramen. I stood facing four shelves of ostentatious instant noodle packaging, and grabbed the packet in closest reach of me with a picture of an egg on it. There was a soft crinkly thud and tinny rattle as it landed in the metal cart.

 

On the wall in between the two pillars of the same isle, were tacked polaroid portraits from Joyce Victoria Teng, ConfrontAsian series. Scribbled on top of the polaroids in white marker were stories of anti-Asian racism. The subjects shared experiences of being stereotyped as maths geeks, coronavirus carriers, or governed by strict parents, and stories about being fetishized, called ‘Ching Chong’, or having their names intentionally mispronounced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The photography continued with a fashion-photography-esk series, Unchecked Growth by Huizi Miao, while Lucy Meeber’s book, Null Island, connected images of 26 bellybuttons with a shedding black yarn that penetrated each centre of each bellybutton. Black yarn featured again in the artwork S1 by Mary Winda Gibbon. A strip of what looked like black hair that cascaded from the ceiling, was in fact the unwoven threads of Thai fabric that is frequently sold to tourists. Stripped of its pattern and colour, it insinuated that local culture was being depreciated to cater to tourism. I took two strands between my fingers, crossed and uncrossing them over. I wanted to weave it back together.

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The hot and static sounding of the tannoy, breathily announced to shoppers that the mart would close in 30 minutes. A choir of clattering trollies crescendoed. The remaining works by Jaehyun Barn, Timothy Hon Hung Lee and Hojung Jung, incorporated religious and spiritual references and explored the transcendental. I drifted into Jung’s cloud of inky blue smoke and meditated there for a moment.


 

In the midst of a global pandemic that has prompted an outward surge in anti-Asian racism across the world, which in turn has exposed widespread ignorance of the cultures and countries from south and southeast Asia, the exhibition felt timely. The inclusion of works that married Western and local aesthetics, as well conceptually made a mention of the influence of globalisation on Asian cultures, spiritualities, economies and identities, made it apparent how interconnected we are today and how, as such, there is no longer really any room for ignorance.
 More importantly, by bringing together various works that called upon a diversity of  traditional and contemporary cultures and aesthetics from the region, the exhibition became a space of learning and dialogue. As a group show, it created a full and juxtaposing panorama that facilitated the exchange of experiences and perspectives, imperative to exposing prejudices and deepening one’s own understanding of the experiences of others.

 

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I headed to the checkout to pay for the Erguotou, noodles and washing powder, and on my way I picked up one of Kayla Lui's orange risograph prints for a tenner. The conveyor belt hum was accompanied by an intermittent beep as my purchases passed into the hands of the cashier.  Drumming my fingers on my desk until I received a confirmation email that the transaction went through, I then exited the virtual tour and closed my laptop.

 

Goldsmiths Oriental Mart is running from 4th May - 31st July 2020, and is available to view online  at https://orientalmart.creatorlink.net/.