Hentyle Yapp introduces his book Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021)
This seminar is hosted by the Judith Neilson Chair in Contemporary Art, UNSW as part of the UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture Contemporary Asia-Pacific Visual Cultures Webinar Series. The series aims to foster a cross-institutional, international dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region by showcasing new research and thinking on contemporary visual art and culture.
About the seminar:
In Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic, Hentyle Yapp analyzes contemporary Chinese art as it circulates on the global art market to outline the limitations of Western understandings of non-Western art. Yapp reconsiders the all-too-common narratives about Chinese art that celebrate the heroic artist who embodies political resistance against the authoritarian state. These narratives, as Yapp establishes, prevent Chinese art, aesthetics, and politics from being discussed in the West outside the terms of Western liberalism and notions of the “universal.” Yapp engages with art ranging from photography and performance to curation and installations to foreground what he calls the minor as method—tracking aesthetic and intellectual practices that challenge the predetermined ideas and political concerns that uphold dominant conceptions of history, the state, and the subject. By examining the minor in the work of artists such as Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan, Cao Fei, Cai Guo-Qiang, Carol Yinghua Lu, and others, Yapp demonstrates that the minor allows for discussing non-Western art more broadly and for reconfiguring dominant political and aesthetic institutions and structures.
For a free PDF of the book's introduction and more information, please go to https://www.dukeupress.edu/minor-china
Duke University Press is offering a discount for the book. For a 30% discount, please use E21YAPP at https://www.dukeupress.edu/minor-china.
About the speaker:
Hentyle Yapp is associate professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre + Dance at the University of California, San Diego. Yapp previously taught at New York University, Pomona College, and San Francisco State University. He is the author of Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic (Duke University Press, 2021) and the co-editor, with C. Riley Snorton, of Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (MIT Press, 2020). His essays have appeared in American Quarterly, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asia, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, and Journal of Visual Culture, amongst other venues. He is also a member of the Social Text editorial collective. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley, JD from UCLA Law, and BA from Brown University.
Image caption: Yan Xing, Kill (the) TV-Set, detail, 2012. Two-channel video (black and white, silent), 2:30 min. and 3:06 min. © Yan Xing. Courtesy of the artist. The cover image consists of two men holding one another. Both men are wearing crisp white button-up shirts. One man is holding a cello bow, while the other holds a large string across his back.
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