New Artists in Focus Video Features Performance by LA-based Artist xiouping
This Artists in Focus: Performances video features a special performance by LA-based artist xiouping during the opening reception for the exhibition i know you are, but what am i? on June 24, 2022, in the Main Gallery of the Museum.
xiouping aka (TNT) Taiwanese & Texan, is an American new genres research based artist. xiouping’s work examines identity politics through story telling. A reconstruction of her existence spanning time meditating on the diaspora of animacy. Her performances investigate myth making/story telling through a queer bi-racial lens of indigenous shamanic Taiwanese, and Cherokee-European ancestry, taking back her agency and narrative, using the relationship between performer and audience, dismantling racism, sexism, and the human condition.

Installation photograph i know you are, but what am i?, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Jun 24, 2022–Jan 7, 2023, photo by Zachary Norman, © UMOCA
xiouping’s video, A.K.A., featured in the exhibition i know you are, but what am i?, draws, stylistically, on early video art with its flicker and visual noise. In A.K.A., xiouping lyrically lists a variety of monikers by which she is known and has chosen to claim. In a world of titles, taunts, labels, and name-calling, xiouping’s video defines self-authorship. She tells the viewer who she is with clarity and authority, giving herself a name, spelling it out for you.