Yiren speculates on the conditions of making art in a foreign context

Is there space to create non-social non-political art for aliens on foreign soil? Maybe “the space to create” isn’t the right phrase. Is there space for such art to exist on a foreign land at all? As works of Haley Bueschlen and of Mo Kong are exhibited side by side, one is a clever twist of social incooperation to examine social rules of one’s native land, the other is of a pair of foreign eyes looking at cultural phenomenon of a foreign land, the latter stuck out as a panda in this zoo. Not “a panda that bites your head off,” but one posting lovely gestures corresponding to its foreign environment. The boundaries of geographical marks re-surfaces as an invisible boundary of foreignness. Do there pandas still have exhibition value if it simply exist beyond the boundaries? What is an a-social a-political alien panda in the land of America?

—Yiren on Haley Bueschlen’s fractured_fag_poetry_2_doom digital.nations.feeds.w..out..logical.vol and Mo Kong’s Sticky Liver, Soft Shock