Monstrous Beauty: The Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie at The Met
The concept of the exotic Asian woman and chinoiserie has long been intertwined in European cultural imagination. Despite criticisms of cultural appropriation and racist projections, these tropes remain prevalent in contemporary culture. In 2015, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted the exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass,” celebrating the fantasy of China as a land of symbols. This exhibition highlighted the enduring appeal of chinoiserie.
When Iris Moon, an associate curator at The Met, approached me in 2022 to collaborate on a new exhibition revisiting European chinoiserie, I was initially wary. However, upon meeting Moon, I realized that this collaboration would be different. Moon, along with other Asian-American women curators at The Met, is redefining the museum’s approach to art curation. Her vision for the exhibition, titled “Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie,” delves into the complex intersections of style, racialized femininity, global commodity, beauty, violence, and national ambitions.
The exhibition challenges traditional notions of art and history by pairing 18th-century European objects with contemporary artworks by Asian-American women artists. One of the striking pieces in the show is Yeesookyung’s ceramic assemblages, which blend broken ceramic pieces into mesmerizing sculptures that speak to themes of growth and transformation. Lee Bul’s sculpture “Monster: Black” and Patty Chang’s video “Melons (At a Loss)” offer powerful reflections on female identity and inheritance.
Chang’s commissioned ceramic sculpture, shaped like a massage table, serves as a poignant memorial to the Asian-American women who lost their lives in the Atlanta shootings. Intended to be sunk into the Pacific Ocean, this piece symbolizes the transformation of waste into new life, echoing the historical entanglement between Western desire and Asiatic goods.
“Monstrous Beauty” invites viewers to reconsider the relationship between personhood and art objects, challenging the boundaries of femininity, ethnicity, and objectification. By juxtaposing historical artifacts with contemporary artworks, the exhibition prompts a reevaluation of our understanding of beauty, identity, and materiality.
Moon’s curatorial approach in “Monstrous Beauty” reconfigures the past and present, inviting viewers to question their complicity in objectification and to listen to the silent stories embedded in material objects. The exhibition is a profound meditation on transformation, beauty, and resilience in a world marked by violence and complexity.
In a broken world, finding beauty in the cracks is a transformative act. “Monstrous Beauty” invites us to reexamine our relationship to art, history, and the objects that shape our understanding of the world.
