A digital archive of Asian/Asian American contemporary art history

Tsuchitani, Scott

Artist Website

"I'm interested in visual culture as dynamic process: how people are represented, how it shapes public perceptions, and in turn, the impact it has on individual subjective experience. It's empowering to approach art as a process of cultural production: I'm participating in creating the culture we live in, and insofar as meaning is a function of cultural context, in my own small way through my art, I can create social change.

For the moment, I'm committed to a socially engaged practice of art that is grounded in my lived experience. A formative part of that experience is one of marginalization, from being a person of color in this country, an Asian American man in a culture that represents us as less than 'manly', and most profoundly as someone who grew up as a typical middle child. Much like Lisa Simpson, I'm sensitive to the dynamic of power relations, to whose voice is heard and whose is not, and engage those dynamics in my practice of art.

Through the use of humor, storytelling, and playing with cultural symbol and stereotype, I try to make the invisible visible, to expose the structures of domination behind the apparent naturalness of social relations. My work is, in part, about creating space from the margins in the mainstream, creating space in the culture, whether it be that of family, community, or mass media, for all of us to be just as we are, rather than how the dominant culture tells us to be."

Scott Tsuchitani, Artist Statement, 2005

Gallery of Selected Works