Emma Sulkowicz (of "Mattress Performance" fame) has a new gallery show that inquires into Asian-Amercan identity.

The "Mattress Performance" was so much about female identity that perhaps you did not even notice Sulkowicz's ethnic performance... or maybe you thought it would seem anti-Semitic to notice, because you think of Sulkowicz as Jewish. But you were wrong! From HuffPo:

“I realized so many things were related to being an Asian woman. I didn’t report it all because I’m Asian and told not to have emotions and just be successful,” they told HuffPost. “Now I’m having my first show that explores where race really intersects with feminism.”

Asian! It turns out Sulkowicz's mother is half Japanese and half Chinese.

One of the more commanding pieces of their exhibit showcases a banana sliced with a knife, a subversive statement on both gender and race, Sulkowicz explains. The piece is dedicated to their sister and contains a video of her cutting the banana and designating it a phallic symbol. The banana also represents the Asian-American experience.

“Banana is a term for Asians who are too Americanized. That’s a source of vulnerability,” Sulkowicz said, explaining that the knife cutting through the banana comes from a place of anger as well.

“We identify ourselves as angry Asians,” they added.

I had to stop and think about the pronouns. Did that "we" go with "they" and refer only to Sulkowicz, or is Sulkowicz speaking for Asians in general, expressing their anger via penis-cutting? I think it's the latter, because in the first quote, above, Sulkowicz uses "I" repeatedly.

Sulkowicz’s parents are represented in the exhibit, too. A suspended tea ceremony represents their mother, who is half Chinese, half Japanese.... An orb containing a bagel, fixings and iced coffee represents Sulkowicz’s Jewish father’s longstanding Sunday tradition....

Awfully stereotypical objects — tea for Chinese/Japanese and bagel for Jewish.

Sulkowicz describes a bowl containing Cheetos and chopsticks as being inspired their friend, Mae, who is half Chinese and half Japanese. “Mae eats Cheetos with chopsticks. That’s such a boiled-down example of growing up mixed-race Asian in New York. You’re eating American trash but with an Asian tool. It’s a moment I wanted to capture.”

Or Mae doesn't like getting that orange dust on her fingers. Quite sensible to eat Cheetos with chopsticks. Reminds me of how I eat a banana with a knife and fork. And I want to stress that I do that because I like to keep my hands clean, not because I'm expressing hostility toward genders and ethnicities that some people think of when they see a banana.

“It’s hard to be taken seriously as Asian woman in art world,” they said. “I feel highly sexualized. I’m so sick of men who come up to me after a performance and say, ‘Do you think anyone would care about your artwork if you weren’t pretty?’ When will you leave any room for my artwork to speak for itself?”

Sulkowicz tells us what men tell Sulkowicz,  that Sulkowicz is pretty. Why didn't Sulkowicz leave us any room to judge for ourselves — whether Sulkowicz is pretty and whether we should direct our attention to the question whether Sulkowicz is pretty? But I won't take the bait. I'll do what I would have done without being criticized for failing to do, let the artwork speak for itself. It seems to be a collection of obvious stereotypes and heavy-handed symbols that don't really say anything about the large group of individuals that are being aggressively clustered into a set called "Asians."