Antonius Bui
yêu em dài lâu (me love you long time) Dec 8, 2018 – Mar 3, 2019
Antonius Bui yêu em dài lâu (me love you long time) Grace R. Cavnar Gallery
yêu em dài lâu is a new series of life-size, hand-cut paper portraits that celebrate Queer AAPIs (Asian American Pacific Islanders) in the artist’s life. Public Program Burning 100 Demons Friday, February 1, 2019 6:30 PM Burning 100 Demons is a Lunar New Year ritual that celebrates our queer ancestors through spoken, written, and embodied poetry. Inspired by Lynda Barry's One! Hundred! Demons!, we will be reflecting on our demons of 2018, the life moments that haunt you, form you, and stay with you. We invite the community to burn their demons and intentions as a way to bring forth the Year of the Pig. Organized by Ching-In Chen, Antonius Bui, and various queer artists around Texas, we hope to create an intersectional space for healing and catharsis.
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elevator
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entrance
01. không có gì (You're Welcome), 2018 Installation of fortune cookies Dimensions variable 02. Ancestors Couldn't Even Dream of Them, 2018 Hand-cut paper 98 x 50" 03.
Are You Worthy of My Love, My Strength, and My Rage?, 2018 Hand-cut paper 105 x 50”
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She/They/We Was Once Half of One Face, 2018 Hand-cut paper 82 x 41”
05. Chởi ởi, 2018 Hand-cut paper 97 x 48”
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Not Your Oppa, Not Your Submissive Bottom, 2018 Hand-cut paper 90 x 42”
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To the Forgotten, To My Queer Ancestors, 2018 Lacquer altar with queer AAPI literature Dimensions variable
08. Masc Enough For Ya?, 2018 Hand-cut paper 88 x 42” 09.
It's No Surprise They Started the Revolution., 2018 Hand-cut paper 96 x 41”
10. Vanguard, 2018 Hand-cut paper 78 x 42”
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me long you love time a lyric essay composed for Antonius Bui The story begins and ends with cuts on the body. The story begins a doorway. One in which you expect to be fed. You enter the doorway see a familiar object – one which accompanies you late-night jaunts. Cheap, quick food, right? Sold to be scarfed, to fill you up oily and tummy. An object holds promise. Sweet, possibly stale, remnant. A night fragment, a love time. A body if you open paper, holes or light or wind? Does one (or a double) take To make up/make berth, do you blame paper, which jags your skin. Do you nerve surprise, up space? innocent opener of mail. Adjacent to pain, a clean ambush. Who would allow them, waiting by paper deities? If a deity could shred (love – if doorway me) a cocoon – if you become large as room, red as luck, luscious as fire? If you encounter hand-drawn, hand-cut yourself? Against a habit of environmental diminishing? A kind of anxious deterioration, social tradition not always true [You match up against brother, sister, cousin, your auntienot-auntie. House noisy as backyard party. An opening too for song.] Which taught you to match up, back up? To celebrate our large and divine, our sly accoutrement armor, our recognizable grand slam? To enmesh pattern, you scrap, save, flip a blade, save a wrist. To arrest a gaze requires sly placement, solid planting of figure against pale backdrop. A shredded line becomes curve. To look completely requires head back, unlearning accompaniment, adornment, ornamentation. A filling in shadow line. When lines settles into rest, story gathers and learns adornment. Recognizes its own threshold and crosses into dusk. Come morning, I visit altar again, thumb through slender volumes, a line of spiders down a page. In a nestle of smoke, place my forehead against earth. 4
I ask: when story ends who shreds long love from page of body a surprise opener to pain who smokes promise settling into skin a paper ambush a cocoon drawn luscious for opening
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Antonius Bui yêu em dài lâu (me love you long time) Grace R. Cavnar Gallery
Antonius-Tin Bui (they/them) proudly identifies as a queer, gender-nonbinary, Vietnamese-American artist. They are the child of Paul and Van Bui, two Vietnamese refugees who sacrificed everything to provide a future for their four kids and extended family. Born and raised in Bronx, NY, Bui eventually moved to Houston before pursuing a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MIC/A). Since graduating in 2016, they have been fortunate to receive fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, Tulsa Artists Fellowship, Halcyon Arts Lab, and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. 6
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017; winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry). Chen is also the co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat and Imagining America and are a part of Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. Their work has appeared in The Best American Experimental Writing, The &NOW Awards 3:
The Best Innovative Writing, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. A community organizer, they have worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside, Milwaukee and Boston. A poetry editor of the Texas Review, they currently teach creative writing at Sam Houston State University. In 2018, they co-organized Failure to Con/Form, a series of performances in Houston, Texas featuring trans, genderqueer, intersex and gender-non-conforming writers, performers and visual artists in response to shared stories & conversations with Houston-area trans & gender-nonconforming folx. 7
Detail of Vanguard by Lauren Lohman. Mission Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time. About Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances. Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston. Support Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc.; David R. Graham/Felvis Foundation; the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; the Texas Commission on the Arts; The City of Houston; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc.
4912 Main Street Houston, Texas 77002
www.lawndaleartcenter.org