MAI LING
Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Wien
15.9. – 12.11.2023
Founded in Vienna in 2019, MAI LING is an artists’ collective and association dedicated to facilitating dialogues about experiences of racism, sexism, homophobia, and any kind of prejudgment, particularly against Asian FLINT* (women*, lesbian, inter*, non-binary, and trans*). Encouraging and contextualizing contemporary Asian art and culture, Mai Ling employs a variety of artistic and discursive formats such as performances, texts, videos, sound, installations, talk series, interventions, and protests.
THE EXHIBIT
In NOT YOUR ORNAMENT Mai Ling investigates the racialized and gendered logic of “Ornamentalism”—a term conflating “Orientalism” and “ornamental” that the American feminist scholar Anne Anlin Cheng discusses in her book of that title, which analyses how the European and American imagination has constructed Asian femininity as a hybrid human being and decorative object. Mai Ling challenges such an objectified condition through ornamental and invasive plants. Drawing on the Secession’s close relation to the Art Nouveau movement—often characterized by ornamental designs inspired by natural forms, such as flowers and plants—Mai Ling aims to reclaim their agency confronted by the decorative aesthetics that perpetuates the sexualization and dehumanization of Asian bodies within white society.
In this exhibition, the kudzu plant plays a central role in relation to the concept of “stickiness” as an agency of resistance and pleasure. Initially introduced as an “ornamental” plant during the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 in the U.S., and later used in agriculture to prevent soil erosion, the vine is now considered invasive in most of the Western world. Native to East and Southeast Asia and some Pacific islands, kudzu is known for its beneficial properties as a weaving material and as part of traditional medicine and cuisine, with the starch of its roots being used as a thickener and sticky ingredient.
Photos by Iris Ranzinger & Mai Ling
In their two-channel video installation Becoming Stickiness Mai Ling positions themselves and their own journey as one with kudzu—embracing its trans-formative, sticky, pleasurable, and resilient qualities. As the collective puts it: “Transforming and becoming with kudzu means developing our own abilities to take up space, merge with our surroundings, meander through obstacles, heal our kin, and spread freely. They say kudzu is difficult to eradicate because of its large, tuberous root structures. Let our own roots grow strong together.” The work begins with the search for kudzu, stickiness and pleasure through the gestures of experimenting, cooking, eating, sensing, interacting with, and embodying the invasive plant.
It culminates in a collective choreography in which multiple bodies intermingle and ultimately become one with plants, challenging the troubled tensions within the politicised dichotomies between human and object, between decorative and invasive.
In an environment of ornamental plants in soil, the visitors can listen to the many voices of Mai Ling. Unfolding both historical accounts and their individual memories in relation to commodified house plants brought to the Western world, each story exposes the intricate entanglement of ongoing horticultural colonialism, exoticism, and migratory experiences. At the same time, the wallpaper re-appropriates botanical designs for domestic spaces typically seen in the Art Nouveau movement. The group portrait at the end of the exhibition further connects to Mai Ling’s existence being intertwined with that of the ornamental and invasive plants.
Curated by Christian Lübbert