Hua International is presenting a partial reinstallation of an exhibition that CFGNY produced for Japan Society in New York. Japan Society is an American organization founded in 1907 by American businessmen who desired closer ties to the elite of Japan. The original installation took inspiration from the archives of Japan Society and explored how the institution was instrumental in shaping ideas of Japanese-ness, and by extension Asian-ness for an American audience.
The Japan Society’s current home, Japan House, located on Forty-Seventh Street and First Avenue in Midtown East, was designed by architect Junzo Yoshimura with the aim of distilling an essential and timeless Japaneseness. Before the opening of Japan House in 1971, Japan Society occupied various office buildings in Midtown Manhattan. The cardboard fragments displayed throughout this installation directly allude to architectural elements of these New York buildings, where narratives of Japan were shaped over the span of half a century. This developmental period of Japan Society highlights a fundamental Americanness that still structures our perceptions of Asia. Cardboard initially appeared in CFGNY’s work as a reference to the cardboard boxes comprising passengers’ check-in luggage on flights to and from Southeast Asia. A ubiquitous and inexpensive material, cardboard is a universal transport element for global trade items, traveling alongside the spillage of associations, policy, and materials housed within its packaging.
Like cardboard, both garments and porcelain become a skin onto which meaning is projected from their surroundings. Mirroring this relationality, the porcelain works displayed on dining room tables are created by casting the negative space between found objects that have been abutted, carrying the ghostly imprints of the conditions that initially formed these objects.
Long sought after through trade, exported porcelain at one point symbolized the desire for direct market access to China. The conceptualization of China as an elusive yet nearly graspable market to exploit, from which marvelous commodities could be obtained, has fueled a protracted American fantasy to the extent of becoming a cornerstone of American identity. The mentions of China in Japan Society’s archive almost rival those of Japan itself: Japan is positioned as both a competitor of and a potential entry point into the Chinese economy. Early documents suggest that Japan and China have existed as parallel entities in the US imagination: a gateway to be sculpted and a goal to be exploited. With the installation as a whole, the relational construction of the ideas of nation, states of knowledge, foreignness, and diplomacy materializes; a shape takes its form when contrasted with another.
