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.

xiouping, A.K.A., 2021, digital video, Courtesy of the artist.
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.