What am I made of?

Tze Ming Mok, “Race You There”, Landfall 2008, Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2004, pp.18-26.


Tze Ming Mok is an Auckland born, New Zealand Chinese writer who has huge a interest in politics, sociology, literature and humanity. Her work often discusses the cultural collection of the contemporary New Zealand populace. In her writing Race You There, she explores what it means to be Asian in New Zealand and her personal experiences are shared as an example.

As an immigrant from East Asia, I found this article very friendly and familiar. In addition, the concerns about race and culture were interesting in relation to me having a creative practice here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I was born in South Korea and educated and lived in New Zealand for more than half of my life. However, by walking around Auckland city, I still get that same boring question over and over again asking me where I am originally from. May be this is one of the reasons why I still find it a little bit difficult to blend in here? I agree with Mok’s view, the Asian label has become a strong collective identifier (22). Being Asian in appearance, I think, has a strong image of appealing as alienated and ‘Asian’ disregarding our life and who we really are.

Mok expresses Asian as invisible by bringing up journalist Phil Vine’s view point, migrants and their children are magical people (22). The word invisible and magical expresses what it meant to be Asian in New Zealand very well, especially at the time of her article was written. Then again, the issues of race and culture have been loosened and the population in New Zealand is now a collection of diverse immigrants creating a multicultural society. Within this system, it deals with the concept of originality, collecting and re-contextualisation. Comparing myself with artefacts in Clifford’s article On Collecting Art and Culture, I could consider myself as globalization in terms of object. I was removed from my original package and collected and collaged into a new field of culture. For me, 'belong' or 'don’t belong' is really not a big issue anymore. Instead of my desire to categorize myself into a complex situation, I see myself as cross-boundaries between two cultures like in broken boundaries of painting and sculpture in a contemporary field. I believe my identity and originality are inseparable and so as with my cultural environment in my life now which creates who I am.



Clifford, James. "On Collecting Art and Culture." The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth- Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambrigde, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. 215-251.

Mok, Tze Ming. "Race You There." Landfall 208, Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2004. 18-26.

Space as Material Entity

James Meyer, “The Functional Site; or, The Transformation of Site-Specificity,” in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderberg, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, 23-37.


James Meyer is an art historian and associate professor at Emory University in Atlanta specialised in Minimalism as well as other forms of American art. In this article, he explores site-specific art of the 1960s and 70s and how it has been resuscitated and explored in more recent practice. Site-specificity as Meyer distinguishes, concerns two notions of site: a literal and a functional site. A literal site refers to a physical location like monument. He mentions Richard Serra’s thought to this approach about site-oriented works, inseparable from their location (24). In contrast, the functional site may or may not incorporate a physical site. It is a temporary thing, a process occurring between sites.

Site-specific art, whether the work concerns a literal or functional site, it needs an actual location for various reasons and this makes me question the value of site within a contemporary art context. While my last three years studying at a contemporary art institution, I had a huge interest in sculpture and art installation. In addition, while producing artworks, I keep questioning what art is in a contemporary context, but I tend to care less about the site that contains the art. Maybe this is caused by my studio environment that art school provided for me. There are plain white walls waiting for me to engage with and this directly makes me think that I need to produce some work in it. In addition, plain white walls are obviously allowing the audience to interact with artworks without any interruption and this could be the reason why I look at white walls as neutral and forget their own value by themselves.

Meyer (25) noted that ‘site-specific work exposes space as material entity, a no longer neutral place, a backdrop for the merchandising of portable art objects’. Site-specifici art merged together with Land art, started off with idea of de-contextualisation of the gallery and museum space. Artworks challenged the notion to be made and viewed outside the gallery space breaking boundaries of the art world. For example, Spiral Jetty 1970 is one of most well known site-specific earthworks by American artist Robert Smithson located in the Great Salt Lake. This work is clearly showing one of his goals which was to place work in the land rather than on the land.[1] According to his view, land becomes part of the work and cannot be read inseparable. In addition, the value of space in site-specific art can be seen as the most important part of the artwork acting as material entity. Furthermore, if the functional aspect of the site or landscape is valued as material entity here, can site within an art institutional frame be any different? The relationship between art and site in a gallery setting could be expressed as artwork being with an empty white room rather than in it. The only difference could be the plain neutral site within the institutional frame functions as material to support artworks, like the people behind the stage have a hidden role for the show.


[1] Goldberg, Elyse. “About Robert Smithson." Robert Smithson. James Cohan Gallery. 13 May 2009 http://www.robertsmithson.som/introduction.html.