Cute Fucking Gay New York
Concept Foreign Garments New York
Whether or not you caught CFGNY’s runway performance Saturday (read my recap for The New York Times) you can still see their installation, part of Refashioning, up at the Japan Society until February 19. The party report format isn’t really able to engage with a larger context of institutional critique — a main subject of CFGNY’s installation at the Japan Society being the history of the white-led institution. Founded in 1907 (following Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese war), American businessmen were motivated to develop trade relations with Japan, and by proxy the larger Asian continent. John D. Rockefeller III was the president from 1952 to 1977.
I feel like knowing this context made Saturday’s performance more interesting for me — it was a jubilant celebration of community, but also threaded through with alienation and (mis)translation in the garments themselves, and then the runway show was juxtaposed with CFGNY’s artworks, on view in the other room, that underline language like “Oriental” and “penetrate into the real interior” in literature from the Japan Society archive. (Before seeing their installation I’d assumed the Japan Society, which is in Midtown East, not far from the United Nations Headquarters and multiple foreign consulates, was funded by the Japanese government to promote the nation’s arts and culture.)
The ways that CFGNY negotiates the history of the Japan Society is layered, and I feel like one of the real successes of their project is offering multiple entry points. But also the way complications get flattened in how it’s been written about (I think only Danielle Wu’s review for Artforum really engaged with the history of the Japan Society) is kind of ironic — a display of what CFGNY has been all along interrogating. How is “vaguely Asian” consumed?
Check out the installation if you haven’t yet! I’m obsessed with these cardboard models of architectural details from spaces where the Japan Society was headquartered before their current home came in 1971 with the Junzo Yoshimura-designed landmark.
CFGNY (Concept Foreign Garments New York, or Cute Fucking Gay New York) is led by artists Daniel Chew, Ten Izu, Kirsten Kilponen, and Tin Nguyen. Installation view above by N. Kubota.