Paper Monument

Like many mixed-race/mixed-culture peoples who have emerged, are emerging, or perhaps yearn to emerge from a colonial legacy, most Filipinos see no contradiction in this racial, ethnic, and cultural mix. It is not a problem or a source of confusion to the people in that mix.

These kinds of contrasts give rise to history understood as a morass of unresolved conflicts and multiple lines of flight, rather than a unified tale of artistic development. Of course, none of the current constellations break new ground or present innovative scholarship—that is still a step too far for even #newMoMA—but they renounce the egregious evasions that were previously MoMA’s calling card.

Imagining the person of color as a counterculturalist, as a weirdo or bohemian, means imagining them as someone who cannot be processed easily into the threat/victim dichotomy, but must be imagined as someone who can wreak joy and pleasure and strangeness upon the world.

In the late 1980s, a series of apparently unremarkable group exhibitions begin to take place in galleries and art centers around France. Each show is presented as a selection from the holdings of a pair of young collectors. Only gradually does the public start to realize that all the artists in these shows, which run the gamut of contemporary avant-garde styles, are in fact inventions of the “collectors,” a duo of artists who have taken the postmodern tendency of stylistic diversity to an extreme end.