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Gaye Chan

Gaye Chan
Born	Gaye Chan 1957 Hong Kong, China
Known for	Photography, cartography, web, activism
Notable work	Sweat (2013) Eating in Public (2003) DownWind Productions (1999) Frass (2011)
Movement	conceptual art

Gaye Chan (born 1957) is a conceptual artist recognized for both her collaborative and solo work which can be found on the web, on streets, in publications and galleries alike. Photography and cartography are two of her most recent fields of practice and often ruminates on how both create work that can simultaneously render information while also obstructing it.

Co-founder of Eating in Public and member of DownWind Productions, Chan believes in following the path of pirates, nomads, hunters and gatherers in order to recycle and reuse materials while also promoting self-sufficiency in an era focused on capitalism and corporations. Her collaborative projects in Eating in Public oftentimes set up free "chain" stores and plant food gardens, without permission, on both public and private land; while DownWind Productions uses agitprop products and media, with a focus on Waikiki, as a physical metaphor for other places where self-sustaining individuals have been dislocated in favor of profits.

Trailer / The Commons + Diggers Dinner (2014)

Biography

Early Life

Born in Hong Kong, Gaye Chan was twelve years old when her family immigrated to the United States in 1969. Living in Hawaii, she received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the University of Hawaiʻi before later attending the San Francisco Art Institute where she received her Master of Fine Art degree. Chan would go on to return to Hawaii where she became a professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawaiʻi. She has been exhibiting her artwork since 1979 and has had solo exhibitions at places such as: The Center of Photography at Woodstock, the Contemporary Museum of Honolulu, and the North Fort Gallery of Osaka, Japan.

Eating in Public

Eating in Public was founded by Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma in 2003. Located in Hawaii, Eating in Public strives to challenge the capitalistic system by creating "chain" free markets and other autonomous exchange systems in both public and private areas - generally without permission. The goal of Eating in Public is to follow the path of nomads, hunters, gatherers and levelers to bring back a system of exchange and break reliance on large corporations for the purpose of self-sustainability.

With over one thousand projects currently completed, Eating in public will, on rare occasion, participates in art exhibitions at locations such as distribution centers. How-to demonstrations are also rarely given but offered by Eating in Public. As stated by Chan, Eating in Public is a continuation of work by 17th century "Diggers," and as such it promotes others to run with their ideas "as far, smart and fast as you can."

DownWind Productions

DownWind Production is a collective of artists, writers, teachers, and activists with a mission to assess the overall impacts of tourism, colonialism and capitalism on Hawaii. Using agitprop materials and an e-commerce marketplace, DownWind Production discusses with both tourists and locals alike their complacency as Hawaii's people and lands are being ravaged for profits. By challenging individuals to think internally about their own desires and their relationships with one another, DownWind strives to inform others about the shift from a once self-sustainable Waikiki, rich with plant and animal life, to its current shell of a systematically commercialized tourist resort.

Weeds

A project on edible weeds where demonstrations, tastings, free distributions of herbaceous plants and recipe sharing are done at Sidewalk-to-table locations across Waikiki. Weeds is just one of Eating in Public's attempts to help separate individuals from their reliance on capitalism for food. Weeds takes plants that are otherwise labeled inedible, unsightly and useless and assigns them worth by informing individuals on their possible uses and how they can replace more commonly accepted items in one's diet. With the mindset that many of these shunned plants are able to provide a reliable, free, and tasty alternative, the Weeds project promotes freedom from capitalism through the acceptance of diminishing one's reliance on it.

Share Seeds

Once an ancient practice, Eating in Public's Share Seeds project attempts to bring back the method and knowledge of cultivating seeds and sharing both the product and knowledge with one another. Share Seeds fights back against the claim of seeds as "inventions" by patented corporations, citing that these skills do not belong solely to a corporation or a lone individual, but instead belong to everyone. While most seeds are genetically modified, Share Seeds practices natural methods of cultivation and challenge many state's laws making it illegal for individuals to share patented seeds. They state that sharing seeds is a critical force in guaranteeing freedom and autonomy from capitalism whilst also playing a crucial key our survival as a species.

The majority of Share Seeds locations are permanent sites providing individuals with a means of receiving or leaving seeds for one another. Originally practiced in Oahu, Hawaii, Share Seeds locations have now appeared in places as far as New Jersey, Oregon, California, Ontario, Vancouver and Dusseldorf.

Hi-5

The Hi-5 project started as Gaye Chan's response to her and her partner Nandita Sharma's recycling bins being abandoned. After two years passed of receiving their recycling bin and no one returning to collect it, Eating in Public began working on a project which would later become titled Hi-5. By taking wire mesh containers and affixing them to the side of trash bins, Eating in Public and Chan promoted individuals to place their redeemable items inside for others to take or use as they pleased. The movement caught on as a huge success, gaining rapid speed as Eating in Public created workshops in order to spread the promotion of recycling across Oahu. In 2001, Eating in Public successfully succeeded in creating over eight hundred and seventy-five bins. Honolulu's Office of Recycling would go on to adopt the Hi-5 project with the goal of placing an extra one thousand, wire mesh containers by the end of 2013.

Other selected works

Sweat (2013)

Sweat is a part performance and part demonstration piece created by Gaye Chan in 2013. A several day endeavor, Sweat features Chan using bale straps, a detritus of global capitalism found commonly on boxes shipped around the globe, to create beautiful, nearly indestructible baskets through weaving. By reusing recycled materials found in neighborhoods and businesses, Chan oftentimes offers the finished products in exchange for receiving the initial materials. Chan believes that much as many skills have become outdated or obsolete, skills once used to promote self-sufficiency have unwittingly become targets of such ideas. By using basket weaving, often an insult for someone's work, Chan hopes to promote the link between creators and consumers to restore potential interpersonal relationships. Chan believes that by engaging in creating products through performance means, she can illuminate multiple aspects of the capitalist transaction, "the devalued, invisible worker and the reviled artist, both ever haunted by the deskilled consumer."

Frass (2011)

Frass is a project created by Gaye Chan using an insect-damaged accordion book from 19th-century Japanese, woodblock illustrations. As a direct example of Chan's belief that photography and cartography can both obstruct and offer information, Frass' damaged exterior contains complex patterns of wormholes that span the length of superimposed, lattice-like surfaces. Chan's instillation is composed of ten large-scale, digital prints, each of which are composites of more then three hundred screen captures. These composites are then arranged and shown in a way that replicates roll-up maps. Rotating lasers trace the border locations of one image to the next, suggesting an analogy of insect detritus and larvae tracks as topography and roadways.

Frass juxtaposes the vantage points of satellites with the markings on its surface to showcase the traffic of goods through borders that serve as arbitrary boundaries. It is a reflection on how economic alliances promote free trade while also pushing for exorbitant reliance on borders between nations to criminalize the movement of individuals.

"Diggers Dinner." Commons Gallery, 2014

Group exhibitions

• 2015 “TXT/MSG.” Honolulu Museum of Art / Spalding House, Honolulu
• 2015 “The Value of Food.” St John Divine, New York, New York
• 2014 “Cephalopod Interface.” Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan
• 2012 “Figures.” Andrew Rose Gallery, Honolulu

Solo exhibitions

• 2014 “Diggers Dinner.” Commons Gallery, University of Hawaiʻi. Honolulu
• 2003 “A Dot and a Line.” Honolulu Academy of Art. Honolulu
• 2002 “Chimaera.” Artspeak Gallery. Vancouver
• 2000 “Points of Departure.” SF Camerawork. San Francisco

Web based exhibitions and publications

• 2008 “Free Papayas – Eating in Public by Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma.”
• 2006 “There There.” There web journal (www.therejournal.com). Issue 2
• 2005 “Digital Matrix.” Longwood Arts Project. Bronx, New York
• 2006 With Andrea Feeser. Waikiki: A History of Forgetting and Remembering, University of Hawaiʻi Press

Public collections

• Milwaukee Art Museum
• The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu
• Harry Ransom Center. University of Texas at Austin
• Houston Museum of Fine Art
• The Center for Photography at Woodstock
• Light Work
• State Foundation for Culture and the Arts
• Honolulu Academy of Art
• Persis Foundation

Concepts and theories

Woodcut from a Diggers document by William Everard

Gaye Chan's work encompasses a large variety of conceptual ideas and theories, as well as political viewpoints and areas of discussion. One such idea commonplace in Chan's work is agitprop, or political propaganda originating in Soviet Russia which was commonly found in art and literature. Agitprop originated as a didactic revolution which set about establishing a system of disseminating social knowledge through instructional and mass-produced forms. A strong contributing factor to Chan's work, agitprop is used in both Eating in Public and DownWind Productions as a means of promoting the idea of individuals abandoning capitalistic tendencies and dependencies in favor of establishing more self-oriented and self-sufficient ways of living. By using propaganda inspired artwork, Chan hopes to encourage others to help create free range, anarchist style approaches of overcoming the power capitalism places upon individuals.

Agitprop is not the only political theory Chan promotes through her work. In fact, it's an approach which can be linked to the anarchist beliefs of 17th-century Diggers. These Diggers play a key part in Chan's work within Eating in Public. The Diggers were a group of radicalized Protestants in England, often called the forerunners of anarchism, who sought to cultivate common lands and believed that "true freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth." The Diggers vision of a successful society was one unhindered and unmediated by money -- which was a radical stance striving to challenge the idea of staked claims on what should be common, social knowledge. The Digger manifesto called for a peaceful return of the land to the people, declaring that they would, "digge up, manure, and sow corn," in order to "work and eat together, making the Earth a Common Treasury." In the case of Eating in Public, this is shown in both Chan's public chain markets and in the Share Seeds project -- where the exchange of knowledge, and the seeds themselves, is encouraged between individuals without the intervention of capitalistic organizations. Chan strives to combat the ever-increasing claim to what was once natural, and freely available, resources by creating workarounds that try to inform and promote others to share skills to successfully provide sustenance for oneself while doing so within public or private spaces which may not have given consent.

Activism and recycling are another of Chan's two most prominent ideas within her work. This is most visibly seen in the Hi-5 project, which promoted individuals to reuse and not waste materials that had previously been accepted as trash. By continuing this trend, Chan is able to realize the subject she is most drawn to in art in her statement, "I am drawn to things that have been thrown away and things that are supposed to be worthless. I love how they let me think about the existing value system and help me to imagine different ones."

References

• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Digger.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 26 Feb. 2016, www.britannica.com/event/Digger.
• “TRAILER / THE COMMONS DIGGERS DINNER (2014).” Vimeo, 6 Apr. 2018, vimeo.com/163188832.
• “Honolulu Museum of Art.” Honolulu Academy, honolulumuseum.org/12555-meet_artist_gaye_chan.
• Teruya, Weston. “Episode 1: Gaye Chan.” Art Practical, Art Practical, 19 May 2017, www.artpractical.com/column/unmaking-episode-1-gaye-chan/.
• “Paiko Ohana: Gaye Chan.” PAIKO, www.paikohawaii.com/blog/2015/7/22/paiko-ohana-gaye-chan.

External Links

Personal sites

• Gaye Chan website
• Eating in Public
• DownWind Productions

General Resources

• Interview with Gaye Chan by Autumn Reeser, July 12th, 2013
• Interview with Gaye Chan (audio) by Weston Teruya, January 20th, 2017