Tell us about yourself!

That’s the invitation for those who make it into the current exhibition at the Asia Society Texas Center, and hundreds of visitors have taken the offer to heart. You can view their self-impressions along with their photos at the Grand Hall of the Texas Center’s new home in the Museum District. Even more responses can be found on the Center’s website and social media platforms

The actual question is “What Are You?” and, since it’s tied to a photo exhibition by the gifted photographer and filmmaker Kip Fulbeck and built on the concept of the book by the same name, part asian, 100% hapa (HOP-ah, a Hawaiian word meaning of mixed racial heritage with partial roots in Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry), one might think it’s drawing those Americans who are part Asian. But it welcomes and has attracted all “kinds” of Houstonians who might answer the question with “German-English,” “Bankruptcy Attorney” or “Mother,” or something entirely different, sentimental or funny

“It has been a great interactive project and very educational in teaching about diversity,” says Jordan Dupuis, development coordinator at the Center. He took the show for a preview outing in October at an interactive booth at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair — and it was a hit. “People were very engaged by the project. It draws people in and gets them thinking about how they define themselves”

You can’t tell how people will respond based on age or looks, Dupuis says — sometimes you get very thoughtful responses and sometimes more whimsical ones. “Some were very intense and very interesting in their answers; some were comical”

A few of our favorites among the current shots at the Center include the rather proper-looking lady who writes, no surprise: “British.” The happy-looking man who writes: “I am making cancer history!” with a line drawn through “cancer.” The young woman who wrote: “I’m 25% Chinese, 75% Viet. 100% Sunshine!” And the dapper gentleman who wrote: “I am 100% Chinese born living the American dream to the fullest with the most beautiful Mexican American woman by my side”

“The interactive component of the exhibition provides a forum for the exploration of Houston’s cultural landscape, and truly reinforces the diversity and multiculturalism that have made Houston a microcosm of the entire country,” says Patsy Brown, the Center’s communication director. “Perhaps someone’s statement will spark something of commonality elsewhere”

Kip Fulbeck will be at the Center on Jan. 12 at 3 p.m. for an artist talk and to take photographs of Houstonians himself. For a glimpse of what you can expect to experience, you can view him on YouTube delivering a commentary both witty and serious on race and identity

Additional programs complementing the exhibition will also be presented at the Asia Society Texas Center in 2013. To name a few: The screening of experimental shorts from the Dallas Film Festival Experimental on Jan. 25; a Family Day with storytelling and portraiture activities on Feb. 24; and a talk with Yul Kwon, PBS host and winner of Survivor: Cook Islands, on April 4

The Fulbeck portrait exhibition is free, as is visitor participation. Those who wish to see a second exhibition also tied to the concept should see the groundbreaking exhibition Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter, which originated as the first Asian in America exhibition by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. It includes the work of seven artists and an invigorating collection of paintings, drawings, videos and more that give a preview into the not-so-demure direction of modern Asian artists.

Kelsey Gripenstraw, The Independent

August 30, 2012

Kip Fulbeck is one of those people whose simple presence leaves you noticeably affected. Add in a few colorful stories about his students, and you’ll walk away inspired

Fulbeck’s name precedes him as one of the standout faces on UCSB’s campus. The artist famous for his multiracial-identity work supplies the UCSB art program with a number of self-expressive classes. Specifically, it’s his spoken-word course (the first of its kind to be offered in any university in the United States) that challenges students with intense self-expression, as well as lessons on how to engage audiences

Fulbeck started the class in the late 1990s. Nowadays, the course is one of the more popular on campus, and the end-of-the-quater performances his students put on routinely attract overflowing audiences. I recently sat down with Fulbeck and his dog in his UCSB art studio to discuss the class and the experience it provides for students

How is learning spoken word applicable to everyday life?

Everything you’re doing, whether it’s trying to get a job, proposing to someone, meeting someone at a bar, you interviewing me right now — these are all forms of spoken word

You have experience with slam poetry. Why did you steer away from slam poetry for this class?

I don’t like the idea of competition and art being put together. I think it often distills the quality of work down to a caricature of itself. Seeing poetry slams often reminds me of watching American Idol. You’ve got a series of judges, an audience that comes in looking for a certain shtick that they want to see and that’s what they’re going to cheer for

How is spoken word challenging?

Often, students come in wanting to do the fun thing. But it’s not that easy. You can’t just say, ‘I want to go to the Olympics — looks fun.’ You’ve got to put your time in. I care about people that are committed. I’m not an easy teacher. The way I look at it is, you come to class every day and you do average work, you’re going to get a ‘C.’ If you do really superlative work, you might get a ‘B.’ And if you stop God, you’ll get an ‘A’

I would love if the class was all ‘A’s, but it never happens. It’s not an easy thing. We don’t pay attention to our bodies. Athletes know how to train their bodies to peak. The same thing happens when you’re training to perform. The analogy I use is that, if this was a painting class, you would never come to class with a bunch of dirty, cracked up brushes and start painting. You begin with the cleanest, purest elements you can utilize

How do keep the classes small?

That first day they drop like flies. I think my record was 30 kids [who dropped the class] the first day, and 17 the second day. I had to pride myself on that, because those 17 students had the best class they’ve ever had

There are other courses where you can just be there halfway, but this isn’t one of them because you get up in front of 200 people and you are going to be alone and naked up there. It’s your story, your topic, and you have to sell it. I’ve bombed in front of hundreds of people, and I’ve had 1500 people standing up cheering. You want to grab that and get there

What are common topics for your students’ spoken word projects?

They do a lot of boy-girl, girl-boy stuff, a lot of self-effacing. What gets in the shows are usually the funnier things because that’s what works in shows, but that’s not all of what we do in class. Not everyone in the class gets to do the show [at the end of the quarter]

Do students disclose a lot about themselves in their projects?

They usually tend to open up. Sometimes they just do funny daily observations — writing about college life is always funny. To do a piece about what it’s like on the bike path is guaranteed funny. Talking about an IV party, trying to meet someone at the smoothie shop — people love that stuff, because everyone’s been there

Why is learning spoken word worthwhile?

You don’t get to do this when you are 35 and work for Bank of America. [The students] cherish it, and they should.

This summer, I am working at the Getty Foundation as part of the Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program. The program provides paid internships to diverse students at arts organizations all across L.A., including the Getty. The highlight of my first week was assisting with our Arts Summit, a full day of professional development activities held at the Getty Center. From researching guest speakers to stuffing program folders full of art insight for the interns, I couldn’t wait to experience this day with the rest of my class. Last Monday, June 25, all of this summer’s 115 Getty interns gathered at the entrance of the Museum, eager and excited to experience Arts Summit.

After picking up our info packets and tickets for guided tours, we all shuffled into the lecture hall. In typical “first day” fashion, no one sat in front—though after some encouragement and the leadership of a few brave souls, the first three rows were finally filled in. Once a few brief introductions were done, our keynote speaker, Kip Fulbeck, took the stage. All keynote speeches are different, but none of us were prepared for the excitement of Kip’s presentation.

A pre-recorded voice came over the speakers and started a series of questions based on a job-interview experience of the artist. Kip—a photographer, videographer, writer, spoken word artist, UCSB professor, father, and so much more—played the part of a younger him, answering each “either-or” question nervously. The choices were like an endless yet random and humorous interrogation:

“Pasta or pizza?”

“Country or city?”

“Miley Cyrus or Billy Rae Cyrus?”

“Vanilla Ice or Eminem?”

Then Kip reached the daunting moment of the “check one” ethnicity box. Understanding laughs spread throughout the auditorium as he wondered aloud about ways to draw a large check or “x” to span multiple boxes. He expressed that he never wanted to pick just one, because picking just one box was like choosing between mom and dad.

Kip then dug deeper into this topic by talking about the artwork he is best known for: The Hapa Project. Hapa is a Hawaiian term meaning “half,” and is used to describe people of mixed ethnicities. Fulbeck photographed over 1,000 “hapa” volunteers and asked them to hand-write their answers to the question “What are you?” This was a chance for them to self-designate and self-assign an identity, instead of having one imposed on them or being forced to pick just one.

He spent much of his talk speaking of the various components that make up one’s identity—even above and beyond race—and how it is important to reclaim one’s ability to self-identify. Kip expressed that one of the reasons he did this project was because he did not see his image anywhere. This sentiment is truly reflective of the Getty internship program as a whole, and the reason he was perfect as the keynote speaker. The Getty Multicultural Internship program that I and others are participating in this summer aims to diversify museum staff and the museum field. I personally applied because I too, as an African American woman, do not see my image in too many museums. And now more than ever after Kip’s energizing talk, I’m determined to make it a more common appearance.

Throughout his talk, Kip was full of life and charisma, which definitely helped to create a fun and open atmosphere and boost our energy for the day ahead. He ended his talk with another spoken-word piece, which included a line that inspired me to get the most out of the day(s) that lie ahead: “We need to judge ourselves not on what we believe in, but on what we are willing to do with our lives to pursue that belief.”

Leaving the lecture hall, I was even more anxious to start our career sessions and ask myself what I was willing to do with my life. There were 15 amazing art professionals who came to provide insight into their careers. Session topics included: Artists in the Community, Museum Curation, Arts Education, Art Writing, Fundraising, and Academic Art History. If I had any idea what I wanted to do before these sessions, it was definitely expanded and altered after we finished. I didn’t realize all the opportunities available to us as artists, art historians, and art lovers. At the end of the day, all of us were exhausted, possibly overwhelmed, but definitely excited about what lies ahead.

January 31, 2012

Identity is more than race, and race has no biological basis, said Kip Fulbeck, who spoke at The Arts of Resistance, an Uncommon Conversation at USC Dornsife event in Doheny Memorial Library on Tuesday.

“I was born in a time when in some states, my parent’s marriage was illegal,” said Fulbeck, whose father is Caucasian and mother is Asian. As a child, Fulbeck, who grew up in Covina, Calif., said his classmates told him almost every joke imaginable that referenced Long Duk Dong, the foreign exchange student from China in the 1984 movie Sixteen Candles starring Molly Ringwald. With such stereotypical Asian characters, film and television perpetuated a particular stereotype that still exists in recent movies, including The Hangover, and television, such as the CBS series 2 Broke Girls.

Fulbeck, an artist and professor at UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego, began the event by showing a short video he made featuring his son, Jack, who Fulbeck said inspires him to make art and identify “the weirdest stuff in the world,” such as why every wristwatch advertisement sets the time on the watch to 10:10.

“When I go to Ikea, I wonder why I’m the only one who is bothered I’m being treated like a mouse,” that must follow a specific pathway to navigate the store, Fulbeck said.

This sense of awareness and realization that something “normal” is abnormal or weird is what Fulbeck said is the focus on his art, books, spoken word, video and speaking events.

“Part of my job as an artist is to point out the stuff that is already out there that is really weird.”

One example that Fulbeck asked the audience of the event to answer was: “Name a movie where an Asian American man kisses someone,” Fulbeck said to a silent audience. “Is that strange to you? … I think everything’s got to be challenged.”

The event, which was attended by students, faculty and friends of Fulbeck, is part of a three-part series organized by Indra Mukhopadhyay, a lecturer in the writing program who created the series around the theme of empire, imperialism and resistance.

“So much of resistance is conceived as the opposite of what’s happening,” said Mukhopadhyay, who first saw Fulbeck speak at the University of Michigan in 1999. “[Fulbeck’s] work gets you out of this binary.”

Mukhopadhyay also said he appreciated the humor Fulbeck included in his work, which serves as a cultural analysis.

“I’m really hopeful,” Mukhopadhyay said after the event. “[Fulbeck’s] art makes you feel positive that there still is a possibility of change and hope.”

Fulbeck presented pieces from his three book projects: Part Asian, 100% Hapa, Permanence: Tattoo Portraits and Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids, all of which feature a person photographed on a white background next to the person’s response to a question. In his book about Hapa identity, Fulbeck asked 1,200 participants — 100 of which Fulbeck included in the book — of all ages to write a response to the question, “What are you?” Responses varied from toddlers scribbling or drawing pictures to a man responding, “I make trash cans for a living. You think of trash, you think of Mike.”

“It’s not a book about race. It’s a book about identity,” said Fulbeck, who also said diversity encompasses more than race, including gender, economic status, physical abilities, country of origin, body type and much more.

Though “Hapa” is a slang term describing mixed heritage or roots of Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry, Fulbeck said the term can be loosely interpreted as participants of his project showed.

“The most important part of this project for me was that it forced me to be around people who were different than me,” said Fulbeck, who displayed this project in a five-month-long exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles in 2008, where visitors could respond and display their photos and responses to “What are you?”

“[Fulbeck’s] work is very unique and inspiring, especially as a reminder to why we’re here. He definitely gives a very unique to multiculturalism and what that movement is,” said Alanah Joseph, a junior majoring in communication. “We need more refreshing teachers [like Fulbeck] who bring energy to the room and inspire people to not be so adamant about the ‘A’ [letter grade], and focus on the learning experience in general.”

October, 2011

Kip Fulbeck’s Hapa Project was recently exhibited at the Race: Are We So Different? exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, Aug. 2011

The expanded context of the display considered the history and context of race issues in the USA, and the main objective of the exhibition was to destabilize and criticize notions of race – exposing powerful historical, financial, economical and political interests underlying racial discourses rather than any biological or bodily inherited “truth”, in the same manner that ideas of gender and sexuality had been heavily criticized and objected to in the past decades

However, the inclusion of Fulbeck’s Hapa Project in the context of this issue of the TAP Review also throws an interesting light on the concept of Asia in general, beyond the immediate context of race in the USA. Fulbeck’s project extends to pose an inquiry into broad issues of personal identity, cultural significance and geographical definitions

When viewing Fulbeck’s Hapa Project, one is immediately confronted with a series of questions: Who is Asian? Who is Pacific Islander and how is this related to Asia?  What is Asia? Is it a geographical term? Maybe a historical set of links between certain groups of people spread out over the largest continent on Earth? Or possibly, Asia is a cultural sphere of ideas, along with their practice and representation? Or perhaps being Asian is a question of racial identity, after all?

Fulbeck’s Hapa Project serves as a successful critique of racial stereotypes through the display of individual portraits. His subjects effectively offer their singular appearance and unique characteristics, defying the notion of average or typical signifiers of Asian facial features. The appeal of this project lies mainly in its subversive attitude, and a refusal, on the part of participants and artist alike, to be confined by conventional geographic, racial or ethnic definitions

The presence of the group displayed here, and beyond, (Fulbeck’s project consists of 1200 portraits so far) challenges the scientific desire to classify, to put order and clear demarcations on human identity

Fulbeck cleverly creates a definite level of chaos through brief texts presented in the hand-writing (and doodling) of the varying participants. These citations resist any scientific or orderly manners of description, letting the personal, the singular, the un-chainable leak in to create their own moments of boundless, un-bordered existence. The personal texts accompanying the photographs cannot be summed up in charts, percentages, titles or boxes

Each person in Fulbeck’s collection defines Asia and the Pacific Islands, being (partly) Asian or Pacific Islander or sharing Asian attributes in a different manner, creating  a plethora of definitions, and a chaotic experience that successfully undermines preconceptions of the singularity of Asia that the viewer/ reader may have had

Once this group of portraits faces you, the reader, you are certainly invited to reconsider any preconceived ideas and notions about Asia, identity, race, or other defining elements used in contemporary societies. The Hapa Project suggests an uncanny, haunting moment, when the viewer faces the portrait on display but hesitates as to how to identify or describe the person viewed

In this sense, Fulbeck’s work adds a dimension to the rest of the projects presented in this issue, The Hapa Projectsuggests a reading that does not take for granted the place, context and meaning of Asia. It undermines, on the one hand, but opens and expands, on the other, the definitions of Asia, or Asian people.