RaveBookforumHuang baits us with the shiniest pieces of her mythos while describing the vexing conditions under which she came to be seen at all ... Huang’s true subject, to which he always returns: the strange ambivalence that marks any racialized performer’s ascent to fame. Wong’s star image was built on endless contradictions that, at times, rattled her sense of self. Huang’s true subject, to which he always returns: the strange ambivalence that marks any racialized performer’s ascent to fame. Wong’s star image was built on endless contradictions that, at times, rattled her sense of self.
Bernadette Mayer
PositiveViceI’ve seen \'plainspoken\' attached to [Mayer\'s] style, though, like Gertrude Stein’s, Mayer’s candor still sings mysteries on the page. Memory is not strictly a diary, but it pockets the day with similar devices; the entries read like consciousness spilled, even though, after the fact, she used both journal notes and the photos to refine and complete the text. Lines fall and trip over themselves to keep pace with her thought; objects are pilfered from their verbs; words and phrases repeat so many times they end up aural refrains cleaved from ordinary meaning ... Here is an artist’s early push against limitation, vacillating between mediums in search of a form that can hold all the sensory matter that makes up the present ... Maybe going back and forth between things is the only way to see it whole.
