Solo exhibition curated by Amanda Contrada
Boston Center for the Arts
December 16, 2022 - February 18, 2023
In HIDE AND SEE, Bai contemplates camouflage as a metaphor for assimilation, a labor-intensive process, and a methodology for survival and communication that selectively conceals and reveals.
Camouflage involves making oneself invisible or hyper-visible, sometimes simultaneously. Bai draws parallels between this process and her experience of assimilation as an immigrant from China. She contextualizes this personal history within a historical and political framework that traces how capitalism and settler colonialism demand self-effacement in exchange for opportunity and a sense of safety.
Bai marks the unrecognized labor of assimilation using clay, ink, and string, as well as the encumbered movements of her body captured on camera. These repetitive and taxing actions make physical the often invisible and immaterial exertions required to “blend in” to one’s environment.
By abstracting fragments of her personal and familial history into patterns and forms, Bai has developed her own iconography that she employs throughout the works in the exhibition. A prominent example is the ghost, which emerged from a costume Bai wore as a child during her first Halloween in the US, then evolved through her research into ghillie suits — garments worn by snipers and hunters to conceal their bodies from an enemy or target.
The ghosts in the exhibition serve as avatars for the artist as she reflects on the shifting and conditional state of the alien and the marginalized. Across drawing, sculpture, and film, Bai re-imagines and enacts alternative perspectives on survival, adaptation, improvisation, and creative possibility.
2022/ongoing
Hand-tied cotton and nylon string, clay, lighting gels, and automotive tint
Dimensions variable - this installation was 9 x 14 x 14 feet
2020-2022
Clay, thread, jute, silk screened netting, canvas, sand, and steel
Dimensions variable - this installation is 3.5 x 11 x 9 feet
Photograph
4 x 6 inches
2020
Nylon webbing, plastic buckles, 4 Y-shaped sticks
5 x 10 x 8 inches
2021
Silkscreen and ink on paper
8.5 x 12 inches each
2021
Watercolor monotypes
20 x 14 inches each
2018
Silkscreen, clay, and thread in artist’s frame
13 x 10.5 x 2.5 inches
2022
Film, 22 minutes