In collaboration with Decolonising East Asian Studies, in this talk, Dr Denise Kwan will explore what it means to be an East Asian woman based on her practice as an artist and researcher, as well as her own lived experiences. Kwan’s talk will also discuss media and cultural depictions of East Asian womanhood and their impact on the formation of stereotypes, and counter these by sharing the personal histories and narratives of British Chinese women from her participatory project ‘Object Stories’.
Decolonising East Asian Studies (DEAS) was born from the need to facilitate discussion in East Asian Studies subjects on topics that are lacking representation in the curriculum. Founded by Fu Lian Doble, DEAS has worked with organisations such as Queer China UK, Racism Unmasked, Dear Asian Youth London, and CACH-ALL to present talks to encourage participation from students and teaching staff. DEAS has also been successful in implementing direct changes to the Chinese Studies course at the University of Manchester,where topics such as migration, stereotypes and other social issues are now studied in the first year. The project is supported by Dr Ed Pulford, lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Denise Kwan is an artist working across social practice, visual ethnography,material culture, and migration studies. Working with ideas of embodiment and diaspora, her practice manifests through sculpture, writing, and participatory work. Her PhD research(University of Westminster) explored the use of socially engaged arts and material culture with two generations of British Chinese women(2020) and created a bilingual Cantonese and English art school at Haringey Chinese Community Centre in London. The objects and artworks were curated into a digital platform on objectstories.co.uk funded by AHRC, Language Acts and Worldmaking. In 2018, she was awarded the Early Career’s Prize from the British Journal of Chinese Studies.
Most recently in collaboration with China Contemporary Centre, London(2020), Denise led a series of digital zine making workshops for East and Southeast Asian communities. Through collective creative making,recalling and sharing memories and recipes, these digital spaces became a collective space of mutual sharing in response to anti-Asian racism experienced by communities entitled a Zine of Collective Care.