"With a little forbearance, you will find calm and peace; take a little step back, and you will find more space around you." - 忍一時風平浪靜，退一步海闊天空
When encountering prejudicial treatment or disrespectful comments, Asians tend to brush it off to avoid potential problems, even though discrimination has always existed towards Chinese as early as the 1850s. “Asians have consistently been used as scapegoats, from the whitewashing of railroad construction to Japanese internment to the murder of Vincent Chin to the “China virus”—all the while being labeled the ‘model minority.’ Voices of “Stop Asian Hate” have never stopped; however, prejudice and hatred towards Asians increase over time, especially after 2020.
Deeply struck by the hate crime targeting Asian Americans, especially the 2021 Atlanta spa shooting, MaiYap started to reconsider her identity, her roots, and what it meant to be an Asian woman in the U.S. While racial issues have been brought under the spotlight during and after the pandemic, racism towards Asian immigrants seems not to get enough attention as it should. MaiYap’s new series of works, “Reflection on Awakening,” aims to dig deeper into the issue by exploring and discovering the artist’s genuine feeling and presenting the process of finding one’s true self through palette knife strokes and colors. MaiYap’s paintings depict multiple layers of subjects, such as water, the reflection of the surroundings, and plants that ebbs and flows in between. MaiYap uses water lilies and lotus to symbolize one’s state of mind. In her paintings, however, there are no victorious blooming lotus flowers. Instead, only the leaves are portrayed. “Reflection on Awakening” is a series that emphasizes the ongoing healing process and the continuous journey of finding one’s inner peace. The paintings do not wish to bring out the dark side but hope to approach the serious topic of Asian Hate from an aesthetic and meditative attitude. MaiYap’s process unfolds sorrow and empathy for her people, the Asian community. The exhibition proposal “Reflection on Awakening” would like to bring awareness of racism towards Asians and the truth that it is happening as often, just as other minorities are suffering.
Text by Yi Chin HsieH
