New Jersey Stage logo
New Jersey Stage Menu



 

Resistance, Politics, and Poetics At Express Newark

originally published: 11/18/2019


(NEWARK, NJ) -- In three interrelated presentations on Thursday, November 21st at 6:00pm, artist scholars kate-hers RHEE, Michelle Dizon and Việt Lê reconsider archives, neo-imperial intimacies, and resistance through cross-disciplinary practices which comprise visual art, theory, poetry and performance. The conversation takes place in the Main Gallery at Express Newark.

kate-hers RHEE will give Rutgers audiences a sneak peek of her upcoming 2020 project at the university and her current research into wunderkammers in Europe and Asia, as well as her conceptual work which interrogates the intersections of sexuality, language, gender and racialization.

Artist and filmmaker Michelle Dizon works with an archive of National Geographic magazines to explore the mechanics of the “white gaze.” Through a process of poetic subtraction, Dizon works with only the language on the original page to write a decolonial counterpoint to a way of imaging the world centered on the West. Her images lay the white gaze bare, unearth a genealogy of a racist visuality, and work in the gap between image and text to write against the grain of imperialist narratives.

Artist and writer Việt Lê uses Dizon’s images from White Gaze as a starting point for his poetic exploration of the legacies of war and imperialism. Lê’s text performs a dual work, both contextualizing Dizon’s images in the history of empire and unleashing a rhythmic play with language, both visually and aurally, to cut to the core of how meaning is produced. His text speaks to absence as much as a presence with a story of war and empire told in fragments, phrases, words hanging on the page—an index of both the trauma and resistance experienced by those subjected to the violence of empire.

RHEE and Lê remix the text from White Gaze as a performance, an audience call and response, tracing our collective desires and complicities.




Please support the advertisers at New Jersey Stage!
Want info on how to advertise? Click here



Express Newark is located at 54 Halsey St, 3rd Floor in Newark, New Jersey.

MICHELLE DIZON is an artist, writer, filmmaker, and Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her works seize upon freedom in time to assert languages, materialities, and knowledges that unravel the political projects of Western modernity and that hold space for the intimate and complex exploration of lifeworlds that are silenced by power and written out of history. Dizon’s works take place in both the contexts of institutions and grassroots organizing. She has lectured and exhibited across the Americas, Europe, and Asia in significant cultural and educational institutions such as the Center for Feminist Studies in Zagreb, Croatia, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK, SalaSab, Bogota, Colombia, Caixaforum, Barcelona, Spain, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, The Cooper Union, NYC, NY, Vargas Museum, Manila, Philippines, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong, China, the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Singapore Biennial.

VIỆT LÊ is an artist, writer, and curator. Lê is an Associate Professor in Visual Studies at California College of the Arts. He has been published in American Quarterly; Amerasia Journal; Art Journal; and the anthologies Writing from the Perfume River; Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art; among others. Solo exhibitions include Sonic Spiritualities (Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines 2020), lovebang! (Kellogg University Art Gallery, Los Angeles 2016), vestige (H Gallery Bangkok 2015), tan nÁRT cõi lòng | heARTbreak! (Nhà Sàn Collective Hà Nội). Lê has presented his work at The Banff Centre; the Smithsonian, DoBaeBacSa Gallery, Seoul, Bangkok Art & Cultural Center (BACC), Shanghai Biennale; Rio Gay Film Festival, among other venues. 

Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in a racially segregated, working-class suburb of Detroit, Michigan, kate-hers RHEE’s interdisciplinary work reflects the complex nature of miscast identity, cultural dislocation, and gendered interactions. She uses language, food, and beauty practice as art mediums to explore transnational identity and the construction of self. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of California – Irvine, where she was a Graduate Studies Diversity and Jacob K. Javits fellow. She works in Germany, the United States and South Korea and established her studio in Berlin in 2009. RHEE’s work has been shown nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions and interactive projects at the British Museum – London (2016), Asian Art Museum – Berlin (2016-2017), Neuer Berlin Kunstverein (2016) Group Intervention Video – Montreal (2015), Künstlerhaus Dortmund (2015), Humboldt Lab Dahlem Museum – Berlin (2015), Korean Cultural Service – New York (2015), and the Berlinische Galerie – Museum for Modern Art (2014).

IMAGE: Michelle Dizon and Việt Lê, White Gaze, 2018. Artist book, 7 x 10 x 3/8 inches. Produced by Candor Arts, Chicago.




Please support the advertisers at New Jersey Stage!
Want info on how to advertise? Click here





FEATURED EVENTS

ART | COMEDY | DANCE | FILM | MUSIC | THEATRE | COMMUNITY

To narrow results by date range, categories,
or region of New Jersey
click here for our advanced search.


Art

Art on Screen: The Danish Collector

Monday, July 14, 2025 @ 7:00pm
Monmouth University - Pollak Theatre
400 Cedar Avenue, West Long Branch, NJ 07764
category: art

Click here for full event listing

 

More events

Event Listings are available for $10 and included with our banner ad packages




 

EVENT PREVIEWS

Kirby

Kirby & Delia: "All Rise"

The murals in the Brennan Courthouse (583 Newark Avenue) aren't tough to decipher. There are pilgrims, there are patriots, and there is Hudson County history rendered in the boldest strokes. Look to the underside of the building's grand dome and you'll find signs of the Zodiac; look to the walls for "The Coming of the English," a piece by Howard Pyle that depicts exactly what its title suggests that it will. This feels appropriate for the town's most handsome building — one with an interior reminiscent of classic civic architecture in Trenton and D.C. and the decorated Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and named after a jurist whose written decisions on the Supreme Court were distinguished by their clarity. William Brennan believed in the salutary effects of direct and comprehensible language. For him, the law was no place for abstraction.



Gallery

Gallery at HACPAC presents Colorblind, a solo exhibition of paintings by Val DeAppolonio

(HACKENSACK, NJ) -- The Ruth Bauer Neustadter Gallery at Hackensack Performing Arts Center (HACPAC) presents Colorblind, a solo exhibition of paintings by Val DeAppolonio from July 7 through August 29, 2025. Val is a self-taught, colorblind artist from Northern NJ whose bold abstracts pulse with energy and motion.



Akwaaba

Akwaaba Gallery presents Martryce Roach Solo Exhibition Reflecting the Great Migration

(NEWARK, NJ) -- Akwaaba Gallery is proud to present "Patterns: People in Transition," the second solo exhibition of New Jersey born artist, Martryce Roach. The exhibition features a collection of brand new paintings, ranging in size, that explore the rich history of the Great Migration and its synergy with blues music. The exhibition will be on view through August 15, 2025 with an opening reception on Saturday, July 12, 2025 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm.



Art

Art by Sydnei SmithJordan is Part of Exhibition in West Deptford

(WEST DEPTFORD, NJ) -- The vibrant, story-driven artwork of celebrated Cape May-area visual artist Sydnei SmithJordan will be part of the featured lineup in an exhibition at the Riverwinds Community Center in West Deptford. Running July 1 to August 30, 2025, the dynamic show will include the work of SmithJordan — known for her unique pop fusion style oil paintings of historical figures and future newsmakers— alongside pieces by fellow artists Gloria Gammage Davis, Quinton Greene and Robyn Huber.



Geoffrey

Geoffrey Doig-Marx's "Portraits in Color and Light" opens at the Gallery at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey - A Fusion of Comedy and Heart

(MADISON, NJ) -- New York-based artist, educator, choreographer, and self-described "Renaissance Man" Geoffrey Doig-Marx (GDM) brings his dynamic exhibition Portraits in Color and Light to The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey as the second art installation in the Theatre's 2025 Season. This striking collection of twenty-six original paintings debuts with the Theatre's production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again], running July 9–27. It's a pairing that promises a bold celebration of irreverence, reflection, and artistic energy.