Stellaaaaaaaaaa!

Stella Lai, I Love My Foreigner Friend, Whiter, Gouache on paper, 2006, 30 x 24 inches

More dispatch from NY:

I was wandering around Impulse, a satellite art fair to The Armory Show, feeling a little bit of deja vu from Miami when a colorful painting caught my eye. It had some graffiti elements, which I have become more interested in lately. The strange semi-Asian figures drew me in, as well. They seemed Eurasian but not really. The colors and patterns reminded me of Tibetan mandala drawings. Not that I particularly like that kind of art but I like bright colors and strong patterns.

I'd been staring at it for a minute or two when the gallery owner, Nathan Larramendy, sidled over to explain that the artist Stella Lai, a Hong Kong Chinese currently living in San Francisco, references Asian women who remake their appearance so as to appear less Asian and more Western. They lighten their skin with creams and lasers, straighten and lighten their hair with chemicals, and undergo surgeries to reconstruct their eyes and noses. These procedures are especially popular in Asia, but many Asian-Americans do it, too. You didn't think I was born with this hair color, did you?

Anyway, I was on the cusp of deciding to buy one when he said, "Stella did a joint show with a rapidly rising artist and is really good friends with her. Have you heard of her? Iona Rozeal Brown? She's hot. Tssssss. She can show in any gallery she wants right now." I quickly pointed to White and said, "I'll take that one." Hello. Iona is only one of my favorite artists in the whole world. What a find!

This just in from an article by Saundra Sorenson:

Hong Kong-born Lai explores the reconciliation of spirituality with the Western-influenced pop culture in Chinese society. She specifically criticizes the trendy practice, prevalent among young women, of trying to look more Caucasian.

In Hong Kong, Lai notes a disturbing worship of all features white or Anglo. Because the country is so small, culture is figuratively and quite literally cramped. In a society with a heavy colonial background, the obsession with imitating The Other — in this case, Anglo —prompts discussion.

“Growing up in Asia, it’s just compact,” Lai says. “With these types of images constantly in media and everywhere, you don’t even have the room to remove yourself and criticize it.”

In Lai's paintings, the highly marketed freak show of thinning creams and breast augmentation plays out against a backdrop of recognizably Asian textiles. In pieces like “White” and “Eat!” the figure in the foreground, an Anglicized Asian ideal of beauty, appears before symbols inspired by Tibetan thangka paintings. This demigoddess might be considering a move from an A-cup to a C-cup, or the cruel paradox of a thin-obsessed society whose streets are filled with anxious street vendors, hawking local delicacies.

It is fitting that the ancient and sacred butt up against the ungodly practice of body manipulation and a dogged pursuit of Western aesthetics. It is no coincidence that the would-be heroine of Lai's “White” is an auburn-tressed nymphet whose skin has been bleached so completely, she's in danger of being whitewashed and airbrushed out of existence.

"Materialism is replacing spirituality in society,” Lai observes.

www.larramendygallery.com