A marca amarela: produção artística como resistência na militância asiático-brasileira

Abstract

The following dissertation seeks to reflect on how artistic production specialized in Asian-Brazilian militancy works, mainly in the works Chocopie, Pulgasari and Corte de Cabelo (hair cut) (2018) by the plastic artist Ing Lee; Onde – por enquanto (where, for now) (2018) from the visual artist and tattoo artist Paty Baik; and Criança Amarela (yellow child) (2018) by artist, designer and tattoo artist Monge Han. I think about these works as productions that brings narratives particular to their creators while converging into diasporic experiences, made up by not only perception but also the position of rationalized beings in Brazilian society. I propose to contextualize the formation of spaces for debate and articulation of Asian-Brazilian activists online and offline and the relations of these artists, bringing a general collage of such actions. I bring a short biography of each artist as well as a panel compiling their body of work, showing the experimental characteristics of each different technique embraced by each artist. I try to demonstrate how the images are configured as a powerful tool to propose other possibilities to be recognized in Brazilian society. Therefore, I confront the images produced in the works thinking about strategies to represent what is to be a yellow person, analyzing the texts, graphic elements, colors and techniques present in each work, dialoguing with the concept of representation by Stuart Hall, the orientalism of Edward Said, the diaspora of Avtar Brah and the practices of resistance by Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks. With this text I notice that each artist puts the representation as an Asian-Brazilian in the discussion, but in a position of narrated subject but as protagonists of their own stories. Therefore I conclude that the correlation of artistic productions with race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality as topics contribute to the setup of an arena of arguments named Asian-Brazilian militancy.