Research proposal
Following in the footsteps of the 80’s radical British Black Arts Movement (BBAM), we saw the establishment of Chinese Art Centre (CAC) in 1987, set up to promote ‘Chinese Arts’ in Manchester. A few years later the British Chinese Artists’ Association (BCAA), was established in London, initiated by a provocation during a conference held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1991, funded by the London Arts Board with national portfolio status. BCAA set up as a networking agency to raise the profile of artists of Chinese  descent living in the UK. (In the 90’s Chinese was a term used to include all East Asians).  It held a database of artists from across all disciplines of art, design, performance, film, including traditional Chinese calligraphy and Peking opera. It provided education services, partnered with schools and galleries, giving artists opportunities to work and exhibit. After 10 years it lost it’s funding through the Arts Council of England’s devolution process and was disbanded. 

This research locates BCAA and the artists movement, analysing the critical discourse of representation for British Chinese artists and how this was tackled in its artistic activities.  In the 1980’s local government policy managed multiculturalism in the arts through the London Arts Board’s ‘Black Arts Funding Umbrella’ policy. During this period ‘Black art’ as a term that gave a political charge, giving material value and merit to artists and organisations,  BCAA was funded under this program. Although much was had from the scheme in terms of funding multicultural organisations and projects, it became a reductive term, categorizing, positive discrimination.

Drawing upon the work of Diana Yeh to argue much of the early work of British Chinese cultural history has been overlooked and excluded through Eurocentric institutional racism. It will analyse the critical discourse around issues of representation and the historical links East Asian artists had with the wider Black Arts Movement.

The study will also investigate the role of Arts council England (ACE), examining the impact of ACE’s devolution policy in 2000 and the impact it had on the landscape of East Asian visual and performing arts companies. For a short period of time between 1997-2004 there were four publicly funded EA arts organisations: Mulan Theatre, Yellow Earth Theatre, Chinese Art Centre, and BCAA. These organisations halved within ten years.  ACE is accused of legitimising ‘one’ EA arts company at a time (Thorpe).    

Research Questions. 

1. What were the influencing factors that prevented British Chinese ‘visual artists’ from forming an advocacy movement in  Britain that was as effective as the Black Arts movement?

2. After two decades of shifting terminologies, how does the field of representation change and what impact has it on British East Asian artists now?

3. How do we guarantee our collective histories in the arts and humanities are represented in our institutions and do not disappear altogether?

Methodology: This is an interdisciplinary practice-led research project combines artmaking with methodologies of archival practice, oral history, and comparative cultural analysis pinned on thematic tools for ‘remembering’, ‘collating’ and ‘comparing’. The final research will culminate in a new archive in the form of an art installation, documented and disseminated by written publication.

Remembering: Oral histories collected from British Chinese artists, curators, and key advocacy workers to preserve embodied knowledge, democratize memory, and challenge institutional silences.  Following Alessandro Portelli’s emphasis on oral history as interpretive practice, these testimonies will highlight how artists themselves narrate identity, belonging to and excluded from hegemonic discourses.  It will remember and pay tribute to forgotten female artists and curators. Based on the techniques of Saidiya Hartmen of critical fabulation, an installation replicating the offices of BCAA will be made, creating a living archive with interactive research environment. Housing embedding collected oral histories, archival documents, testimonies functioning both artwork and embodied environment for collaborative research.  Selected participants will be invited into the ‘third space’ to hold interviews, discussions and roundtables, where key questions will be posed to prompt memory and activate critical analysis.  Findings will be recorded and documented and re-presented in a final installation.   

Collating: Archival recovery of BCAA documents, collecting visual documentation of past exhibitions, curatorial practice and artwork will reconstruct the fragmented record of British Chinese cultural activism. This process of collation will bring together dispersed traces into a coherent archive, echoing Maurice Halbwachs’ theories of collective memory.  By highlighting the key exhibitions, it will reactivate pivotal events and moments. To name a few: ‘Far from the shore’, 1997 BCAA Survey show at Pitshanger Manor Gallery. ‘Journeys West’, 1995, Curated by Jessie Lim, Lambeth Chinese Community Centre. ‘Beyond Chinese Takeaway’, 1991 Chinese Art Centre. ‘Number 6’, Artists group show 1998, Anthony Key, Anthony Ward, Erika Tan, Mayling To, Susan Pui San Lok and Yeu-Lai Mo. ‘ Big Screen in Little China’:  BCAA Group show 2002 GMI Screen, London. Collaborating artists will be invited to contribute documentation and artworks to reactivate a selection of curatorial content for the proposed research space.

Comparing: links to the British Black Arts Movement (BBAM), Internationalism & shifting terminologies. ‘If black can be Asian, but Asian is not always Asian, Chinese - among others-does a disappearing act.’ (Lok, S).  While British Chinese artists were included within the broader “Black Arts” collective, their activities remain largely absent from British art history. In contrast, the Black Arts Movement (BAM) of the 1980s–1990s achieved significant visibility through landmark exhibitions such as Rasheed Araeen’s The Other Story (1989) and the writings of Stuart Hall and Kobena Mercer. This imbalance reveals how different directions the Chinese art movement took alongside BBAM. Drawing upon the work of Diana Yeh, British Chinese artists were rendered invisible through “model minority” stereotypes that muted their cultural activism and limited institutional recognition. 

On internationalism: “The interest in China thus threatens to further marginalize the “British Chinese.”   (Yeh, D). During the 90’s we see an international Chinese Arts movement, dominating international art markets. This research cannot ignore the influence and impact this had on the cultural politics and direction of the British Chinese artists, changing institutional strategy and funding opportunities, for instance in 2013 the Chinese Art Centre adopts a new corporate identity (CFCCA to focus on international contemporary Chinese art and residencies, detracting  from its original aims and objectives to represent artists and community based arts activities in the UK. Within a decade later during COVID19, the controversy of ’institutional racism’ is played out on social media rendering the company to close for almost three years, incurred its third name change to ESEA contemporary in 2023.  

Shifting terminologies: Following Diana Yeh’s sociological study, ‘Contesting British Chinese Culture’(2018), highlighting the invisibility of the ‘British Chinese’ she brings the term ‘East Southeast Asian’ (ESEA) into the mainstream dialogue in conjunction with categories of Black, Asian, Brown, Person of Colour (POC). Since Covid19 & Black Lives Matter, there has been an explosion of new groups formed on social media talking about wider issues such as racism in the community and collective adhesion. To name a few:  ESEA sisters, ESEA Hub, BSEAN, ESEA Futures (set up after the CFCCA controversy to provide feedback into ACE strategy).  A map will be produced to situate groups and a community workshop as part of the exhibition to share knowledge and resources.