Whenever the vanguard of the Race’n’Gender Left™ meets the avant-garde of post-postmodern art, hilarity ensues. So it is with Omer Fast’s August, a recent installation in Manhattan’s Chinatown. If you’re wondering why an art show called August opened in September and will close in October, trust us: The confusion doesn’t end there!
Fast has arranged the front of the James Cohan gallery to resemble the waiting room of a Chinatown bus service. A dump, in other words: folding metal chairs, peeling paint, floors littered with debris, a pair of broken-down ATMs. From there, visitors move into pristine rooms outfitted to show two of Fast’s videos. Because that’s what he is, see—a video artist.
So why is a video artist trying to re-create a seedy storefront in Chinatown? You’re not the first one to ask that question. The Chinatown Art Brigade joined with other downtown activists to condemn the show as a “hostile act.” “The conception and installation of this show reifies racist narratives of uncleanliness, otherness and blight,” the brigade said in a statement.
Reifying otherness? Sounds like a job for the Trump campaign! But it gets worse. The exhibit grinds the residents of rapidly gentrifying Chinatown into “poverty porn,” the brigade said. One October Monday the activists briefly occupied the space, brandishing signs reading “#RacistGallery.”
The Scrapbook greatly sympathizes with longtime Chinatown residents under assault from gentrification. They suddenly find their beloved neighborhood becoming Brooklyn, choked by artisanal donut shops and skinny millennials carrying yoga mats. We’ll take the bus waiting room any day.
But the language of the activists does seem unnecessarily harsh, and the leap from criticizing gentrifiers to shouting racism seems a bit of a stretch. No doubt Fast and the owners of the gallery are meticulously conformist in their politics, as all who are successful in the New York art world must be; indeed, a statement from the gallery to a reporter said that the show itself was “meant to raise awareness of the current threat of gentrification.” Quick thinking, guys.
The brigade isn’t buying it, of course. Such are the dangers faced by the post-postmodern video artist. Soon the show will close, but the scarlet letter of “racism” will remain on Fast’s résumé forever. The revolution keeps a permanent record of these transgressions, and the revolution, as we’ve learned, eats its children.
