The Brooklyn Rail

Asian American Art is a Monument

n our collective, Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson), we think a lot about the ways power is created through systems of knowledge—some of these systems are very loud and obvious while others are much more subtle, embodied, and insidious. Here we consider the space of Asian American art as a monument and offer a series of speculative interventions pulled from studio brainstorming done in the production of our 2022 project, Memories Breathe and Every Monument Deflates. This project considered themes such as collective memory, systems of knowledge, and monuments within the American landscape. With this list we ask, how might this strategic repositioning offer tools to reimagine our intersecting communities’ collaborative movements towards liberation?