The MAK Center for Art and Architecture presents the publication launch of (self-portraits as) neither donkey nor horse, a collection of recent work by stephanie mei huang, curated by Hauser & Wirth summer resident Allison C Smith.

Taking the form of an exhibition (on view at Hauser & Wirth) and publication, (self portraits as) presents huang’s recent works regarding racial melancholia and grief as explored through a cowboy drag avatarism of the (Asian) American West. In the wake of the 2021 Atlanta Spa Shootings, huang’s work addresses biopolitical and xenophobic rhetoric that finds its roots in19th century “yellow peril” and then becomes regurgitated and expanded upon in a 21st century anti-Chinese discourse surrounding COVID-19. huang counters/engages with this discourse with domesticized objects of play: play as drag/dress-up, domestication as colonization, animacies as hierichichalized bodies, miniaturization and infantilization of cowboy culture.  A para-narrative is met with an autotheory that ruptures throughout huang’s paintings, sculpture, photography, graphic design, performance, and video/film works, presented concurrently at Hauser & Wirth.

The ultimate rupture from exhibition’s paranarative occurs in the publication, which includes a curators note by Smith, an artist’s essay by huang that follows the tradition of autotheory as a modality of queer theory, and three letters to the artist by Lucas Baisch, Michael Ned Holte, and Ling Tiong. The form of letters reflects on a larger intimate history within queer communities of care and relationships centered around letter writing. For the publication release, huang collaborates with artist Julie Tolentino and sound artist Amma Ateria. huang reads from their personal artist’s essay, a self-theory, followed by a collaborative work engaging with Tolentino’s multi-decade study and practice with Chinese herbs and Eastern bodywork through a moxibustion— the burning of moxa, a mugwort, and artemisia (which huang spent this past spring foraging), on meridian points on huang’s body in a fortification of the yellow femme’s somatics— accompanied by live electroacoustic / binaural beats / equal-loudness contour sound works by Ateria.