Grantees

#
Valerie Soe
beyondasiaphilia (Blog)
Valerie Soe will continue to write on art, culture, and activism from an Asian American perspective. Her blog is named after an experimental documentary she made in 1997, which looked at Hong Kong movies, Asian masculinity, miscegenation, and her love for Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat. beyondasiaphilia focuses on film, but asks more broadly: How do cultural workers become catalysts for meaningful change? How do they reflect issues outside the sphere of the art world? Recent posts address exhibitions by Hasan Elahi, Stephanie Syjuco, and Gaye Chan around themes of commodification and gift economies; films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan playing at the San Francisco Film Festival; and images from the Occupy Oakland protests.

Valerie Soe is a San Francisco-based writer, educator, and artist who was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her experimental videos and installations, which look at interracial relationships, media representation, gender and cultural identity, and anti-racism struggles, have exhibited at such venues as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum in New York. Her most recent award-winning documentary is The Oak Park Story (2010). Her essays and criticism have appeared in Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism (Temple University Press, 2000), Afterimage, The New Art Examiner, Cinematograph, and the Independent, among other publications. She is an assistant professor in the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University, where she teaches film history and production, cultural criticism, art and social practice, and media studies.

http://beyondasiaphilia.wordpress.com/