Even in a city as culturally-diverse as Baltimore, it is not so often that one finds contemporary art that explores the experience of the minority in America without being repetitive or clich. The most recent exhibit at the Maryland Federation of Art Circle Gallery in Annapolis, "Passports," considers the Chinese immigrant's struggles of self-identity and transition in an aesthetic language that reaches out to the viewer in a way that stirs the emotions without losing its intelligence or becoming overly sentimental. All of the works are by the artist Hai-ou Hou (also the curator of the show), who herself left China in the 1980s and experienced all the cultural, social and political difficulties in the passage from one country to another. The multimedia works covering the walls of the small, rustic Circle Gallery are full of an intense energy that moves between high anxiety and tenuous hope that any viewer can connect with, no matter what his ethnicity.
Not only are the works executed with masterful artistry, they also demonstrate a sense of fresh creativity. The work Self-portrait as a U.S. Immigrant (2000) is divided up into three sections. At the top is a picture of Hou's face, cropped down to the nose and eyes, straightforward and heavy with emotion. The bottom section is a close-up of an official stamp, the single, self-explanatory word, "PASSPORT" with a trail of numbers following. Both seem to be photos of paintings by the artist, giving them a sense of internal multi-media. The all-over, weathering effect applied by the artist to the original works invokes the harshness of the immigrant experience. Finally, the middle section of Self-portrait is a tiny triptych of photographs of a nude mannequin's head and torso, taken in various degrees of light. The mannequin's baldness, as well as its elongated features and gaudily made-up face make it look like a stereotypic alien, which seems to play on the familiar term "alien" used for someone not belonging to the country in which they are physically situated and suggests just how "alien" Hou must have felt experiencing America for the first time.
Several ceramic pieces are also included in the exhibit, including Life's Struggle (2000). The clay is shaped into a hollow form like two small tree trunks that have grown together, much like two different cultures must meld in the immigrant. The textured surface is painted all-over in earthtones, with some torn pieces of maps collaged in.
The fragility inherent in ceramic works is an appropriate expression of the vulnerability of a person as he assimilates into a new country. The haunting painted faces on the work, with their prominent eyes and nostrils, stare at the viewer, fading in and out of the clay's texture, begging for some type of understanding, empathy.
The most striking piece in "Passports" is the large-scale Passport #145023139 (1999), formed of torn sections of maps pieced together and painted over. Three ethereal Chinese faces dominate the painting, the lines of their features melding with the patterns made by the lines across the maps and the intersections of the map pieces. Two of the faces, one male and one female look out anxiously, much like the ones in Life's Struggle. The larger face of an elderly person with downcast eyes looms over the two younger characters, signaling perhaps the oppression of the old country or the vast fear of the transition into the new. Official numbers and words in both Chinese and English, painted in exaggerated size, are superimposed over the entire surface. The glowing colors and subtle shading of Passport #145023139 turn the piece into a topography unto itself, the artist having taken these maps and turned them into something of her own creation, much in the way she has been able to make life in America her own.
The repeated use of facial imagery throughout the works is particularly effective: Not only is the face the most immediate conveyor of human expression, it is also the thing that best classifies and identifies the individual, an important issue to a Chinese immigrant who not only feels but may also look different from the majority of the American population.
The sharp focus of the show, both in theme and content, is crafted by Hou in an elegant and efficient manner that allows the viewer time to contemplate what he or she is witnessing, her imagery lingering on in the mind and the conscience.
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