MAI LING

PROJECTS EVENTS FESTIVALS SERIES PROTEST ABOUT ︎

EVENTS

Ugly Things_Unlearning Beauty walks the fine line that distinguishes the affinity for cheap trash from expensive taste, while simultaneously undermining that very dichotomy. We closely examine the authority that decides who and what has a place in the museum and is thus deemed valuable enough to gain entrance, visibility and longevity. This exhibition draws parallels between the two labels and interrogates the motives and mechanisms behind such denominations — with the goal of exposing and dismantling them.

Mai Ling Reads: Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism — Mai Ling Reads is an informal monthly reading group, featuring intersectional feminist thinking in a casual, cozy setting. Each time, we have a selected text to learn and unlearn the way of knowing and sharing. This month, our reading session will take place within the framework of Florestania im Dritten and their projects. Together, we'll explore new connections by discussing texts and practices from both Mai Ling Reads and Florestania im Dritten.

Mai Ling Reads is an informal monthly reading group, featuring intersectional feminist thinking in a casual, cozy setting. Each time, we have a selected text to learn and unlearn the way of knowing and sharing. This month, our reading session will take place within the framework of Klasse für Alle and their reading series. Together, we’ll explore new connections by discussing texts from both Mai Ling Reads and Klasse für Alle.

Mai Ling – Dirt Nouveau The connecting link of the Vienna-based Mai Ling artist collective’s exhibition is the sticky substance made out of the roots of the kudzu plant. Its viscous quality symbolizes not only unity and community but also resistance, challenging the stereotypes associated with “Asia” as the exotic Other, and questioning the entanglements of food, migration, colonization, and the dirty and sticky intersections of imagination. ❗️Curators: Rita Kálmán, Eszter Lázár @lazeszter

We read about and in the midst of climate-sensitive issues, ecologies, the desire for climate justice, the reports on ecocides. Of destruction, reconstruction, rest and regeneration. Of possibilities with and without our species. Focus: Ecology, climate justice, treesmushroomsmoss Language: German, English Institut: Kunstwissenschaften, Kunstpädagogik und Kunstvermittlung Abteilung: Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften Beteiligte: Lydia Baumgartner, Johanna Lutz, Luise Nübling, Claudia Stoleru, Carlotta Partzsch (Studierende der Abteilung Kunst und Kulturwissenschaften)

This session weaves together three distinct yet interrelated practices—experimental documentary, ancestral plant knowledge, and postcolonial ecofeminist art. We will learn about a project mapping fungal networks and speculative multispecies futures through film, dive into  the complex interplay between traditional Ayurvedic practices and volatile plant compounds,  and interrogate the colonial logic of classification through the somewhat misunderstood story  of the kudzu vine. Across different registers  and geographies, each contribution invites us  to question what is considered free and radical across the pluriversal narratives of today.  With contributions from @mai.ling.vienna, @artycok.tv and @aishwarya_chaure (@lee_lab_prague, @ftz.czu.cz, Czech University of Life Sciences  in Prague)

The Food Art Lab invites artists in whose work food plays a central role as an artistic material, theme and/or medium to spend a few days together on Kleine Stadt Farm, Austria's biggest community farm project, in the 22nd district of Vienna. While the first part of each day is reserved for the exchange among the lab participants and the encounters with practitioners from the farm, the afternoon sessions are open to the public.

This chapter of this year’s program focus 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐖𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 is curated by 𝐆𝐞𝐰ä𝐜𝐡𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐮𝐬, a network from and for BIPOC filmmakers in the German-speaking area. A letter to a lost friend, a rainy day in Vienna’s 10th district, a magical plant called kudzu – the films in this program are separated by different languages, geographies and more than two decades in their creation, and yet they are connected in dialogue with one another.

Collective celebration of joyful rebellions: This celebration begins with the building of an altar by Antikoloniale Interventionen in Wien and the invited collectives, to give thanks and to establish the intention. Participants Concept and organisation: @imaynacaceres , Susana Ojeda @estudioelgozo , Marcela Torres Heredia @marcela_torres_heredia Collectives: @mai.ling.vienna, @afrorainbowaustria , @colectivo_ayllu, Antikoloniale Interventionen in Wien, @decolonizing_in_vienna

In her recent activities, Mai Ling explored an artistic strategy and discourse on ‘stickiness’ as collective resistance and pleasure to promote community, kinship and healing among Asian FLINT* and beyond. Stinginess, often associated with disgust, has a subversive potential to reclaim collective action. By “sticking together,” we question the perception of “Asia” as the exotic, decorative other and the dirty and sticky entanglements of migration, colonialism, and imagination. In der Abendveranstaltung „Stick Together“ werden Expert*innen aus den Bereichen Architektur, Gastronomie, Somatik und Biohacking ihr Wissen über „Klebrigkeit“ als notwendige Praxis für Überlebende Fürsorge teilen. Anschließend teilen, essen und verdauen wir gemeinsam unsere Lieblingsklebespeisen, während wir gemeinsam Karaoke singen!

🌷Mai Ling Speaks #10🌷 Date: 22 June 2024, 7-9 pm Venue: VBKÖ (Maysedergasse 2/28, 1010 Vienna) Guests: Grace En-Yi Ting and Priyanka Hutschenreiter * Mai Ling Speaks is a series of talks, interviews, and presentations that connect the active voices addressing structural discrimination, intersectional struggles, and representation against Asian FLINT* bodies. It is a subversive format that aims to diverge the discourse towards the individuals and communities affected while, at the same time, bridging artistic practices and theory by inviting artists, activists, scholars, and cultural workers. For the new episode, Mai Ling hosts two presentations on queer feminist approaches in Hong Kong, Dhaka, and beyond, toward transcultural solidarity to foster communal ways of being, becoming, living, resisting, and surviving in this terribly polarized time.

Mai Ling will take part in the three-day symposium ”PASS(ED) ON: Narrativization of vernacular archives within intergenerational and transnational memory transfer” at the University of Arts Linz on 6.5.2024–8.5.2024.

In this online session, Mai Ling, the anonymous Vienna-based artist association/collective, will introduce their practices and recent video work, Becoming Stickiness (2023). The work draws inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s ‘Queer Phenomenology,’ Anne Anlin Cheng’s ‘Ornamentalism,’ and Banu Subramaniam’s critical perspective on colonial modernity in botany. Through out loud reading and viewing, the meeting delves into the dichotomies projected onto the exotic yet invasive ‘Others,’ and Mai-Ling’s process of claiming their own hybridity through collective somatic practice.

Sharing food has always been a place of kinship, solace, care, and tenderness. Mai Ling Soup Bath invites you to a sensorial and contemplative sound bath, deep meditation, and massage. We will collectively stir up a warm concoction of familiar senses and a brew of edible memories while embodying our past, present, and future. At the end of the session, everyone is invited to share a warm meal together. 🍜

In our last event at @civabrussels organized by the generous team @care.xyz of ETH Zürich, each guest speaker was invited to bring an ingredient that would be merged together in a rich and complex broth. As Mai Ling, we made kudzu balls as a gentle texture and neutral flavor, inviting people to play with its stickiness before adding to the soup. It was a wonderful sharing of ideas, cultures, and practices with all the artists and cultural workers involved. In the framework of the exhibition Unworlding CUBEX, by researcher in residence Anna Puigjaner MAIO, CIVA hosts a performative cooking session and lunch with Merve Bedir, Care., Amy Franceschini (Future Farmers), Zahra Khatri (Cassonade), Mai Ling, Caroline Profanter, and Anna Myjak-Pycia.

In a room full of ornamental plants in soil, visitors can listen to Mai Ling's many voices, which contain both historical accounts and their own memories present to the houseplants. The plants were brought to the Western world and sold as decorative goods. These stories illustrate the complex interconnections between ongoing colonialism, exoticism in horticulture and the experiences of migrants. At the same time, the wallpaper appropriates traditional Art Nouveau botanical patterns for private interiors and is reimagined as the kudzu plant, an ornamental plant native to East Asia that is considered “invasive” in the Western world. The roots of the kudzu plant are turned into sticky bioplastic that drips from the glass window of the display case. With the site-specific adaptation of the installation shown for the first time at the Secession, “Dirt Nouveau” will be temporarily relocated to the Vitrina, the exhibition space in the Brunnenpassage, and exhibited as part of the Climate Biennale.

At the end of an artistic research laboratory with Mai Ling, an open level, migrant-positioned workshop with Karin Cheng, Bianca Figl, Debbie Galias, Virginia "Aura" Lewerissa, Mary Maggic and Suchart Wannaset invites us to explore "stickiness" as an instrument of pleasure and resistance. Through figure-eight motions, repetition, journaling, instant composition, and collective choreography, the workshop shares different perspectives of stickiness as a somatic practice necessary for care and survival, reclaiming the sticky and dirty experiences that made us who we are today.

Mai Ling and Queers 4 Palestine Vienna will co-host a reading session to listen to texts and poems that discuss queerness and decoloniality in the context of Palestine. 🌱❤️‍🔥🇵🇸 This reading session is open to everyone who can respect each other and mutually learn and unlearn complexities. Texts we will read: 📕 Alqaisiya, W. (2018). Decolonial Queering: The Politics of Being Queer in Palestine. 📗 Poems by Mejdulene B. Shomali, Noor Hindi & Mohammed El-Kurd

Sharing our incredible week of somatic stickiness research through the @tanzquartierwien performance laboratory 🌟 During these five days, we explored different ways of embodying stickiness, whether through releasing stuck emotions or sticking with our childhood upbringing and Asian heritage. Throughout this process, we reclaim the sticky and dirty experiences that made us who we are today, leaning on each other’s strength, creativity, and brightness. A huge thanks to the participants for sharing their hearts and energies through this transformative experience: @ooookarin @vgginia @debbsi @biancamayasari @suchart_wannaset @marymaggic

Mai Ling, which started in Vienna in 2019, is an anonymous artist collective. They talk about and deal with racism, sexism, homophobia, and other unfair treatment, especially against Asian FLINT* (women*, lesbian, inter*, non-binary, and trans*). This session is perfect for those interested in art, community, and making a difference. Come and be part of this important conversation!

Our HUNGER program starts next week ☄️ We've put together a guided tour, screening, and writing workshop just for you. We are thrilled to kick off the program in collaboration with @mai.ling.vienna artist collective. Join us for the greenhouse tour through the exhibition “Not Your Ornament” and a discussion on Mai Ling's new film “Becoming Stickiness.”

Let us watch “Pavement Butterfly” starring Anna May Wong together 🎞️ 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐧𝐠 was the Hollywood's first Chinese-American star and also widely acclaimed in Austria and Germany - despite being reduced to racist stereotypes of either evil dragon ladies or rejected love interests who always those in the end. Her contributions to film history have been overlooked and erased for a long time and until today there is little awareness for racist, sexist depictions of Asian womxn. Exoticization, dehumanization and even yellow-facing still prevail in big productions. "𝐏𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞. 🎙️After the movie, we have a Film Talk with 𝐘𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐢, a cultural studies researcher and Anna May Wong expert, and@mai.ling.vienna

Mai Ling Soup Bath is an immersive journey of the senses and contemplation, wherein we shall commune through a harmony of flavors, a meditative sound bath, and caress. Food has always been a sacred place of kinship, solace, care, and tenderness. Let us gather as one, sharing in the embrace of a communal repast, igniting our spirits and nourishing our collective existence. Collectively, we will brew a pot of familiar sensations and edible memoirs — an embodiment of our intertwined pasts, present pulsations, and hopes. At the end of the session, everyone is invited to share a warm meal together.

Mai Ling's first monograph is published on the occasion of their exhibition NOT YOUR ORNAMENT at the Secession, September 15–November 12, 2023. It includes a conversation between the Asian diaspora association Perilla and the Vienna-based artists' collective Mai Ling as well as an excerpt from Anne Anlin Cheng's book Ornamentalism (2019), translated into German by Nicole Suzuki. Artistic intervention: Stick Together, kudzu bioplastic stickers produced in Vienna by Mai Ling and placed on the dust jacket. Each sticker has a different shape and size. The digital publications of the Secession are available for free download on the website.

For the new episode of “Mai Ling Speaks”, we invite three artists, Serena Lee, Aya Momose, and Hyeji Nam, who are exploring the somatic practice and its relationality to movement, sound, and technology, touching on power dynamics, recuperation, and trance-like state. How can we explore pleasure and resistance under precarious situations within artistic practices? Mai Ling Speaks #9 connects and activates voices to foster communal ways of being, becoming, living, resisting, and surviving.

Mai Ling was informed by Vienna's Asian diaspora community of the opera “Der goldene Drache”, that premiered yesterday 14 February 2023 at MusikTheater an der Wien, whose plot contains racist stereotypical expressions against Asians. The plot of the “Der goldene Drache” centers in a Chinese restaurant where one of the characters suffers from toothache. Due to his status as an illegal immigrant, he avoids seeing a dentist and throughout the opera the audience witnesses the decay of the tooth that is subsequently extracted unprofessionally in the kitchen. The tooth reappears in the bowl of soup of a stewardess on his trip to China.

Last night we protested the last showing of “Der Goldene Drache” by spreading our public statement on the problematic theater piece while wearing identical masks that say “NOT YOUR OBJECT.” We were able to distribute over 200 copies to the audience as they walked out the door. We hope @theateranderwien can still reflect on their racist depiction of Asian immigrant experiences. We are not your objects. We are not your ornaments. We are Mai Ling.

Mai Ling invites you to a sensorial cooking ritual where we collectively pound sticky rice to explore its stickiness as an agency of pleasure and trust. Stickiness, often associated with disgust, is a chain of effects which at once affect how certain bodies are shaped. On this festive evening, the rhythmic gesture of mashing and kneading rice into glutinous mass acts as a transformative and emancipatory potential for empowerment, resistance, and care. Let's stick together! 💫🔮🪄

Mai Ling Speaks#7 with WILTS Press @wiltspress and YELLOW PERIL @marymaggic in “Queering the Belvedere: Festival of Vocabularies Life Smashing Wor(l)ds: Cultural Practices for re/Imagining & un/Learning Vocabularies” @smashingworlds at Belvedere 21, organized by collaborations of kulturen in bewegung, ARA, PCAP at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Silent University in Austria and Queer Base.

Recently, Mai Ling has been researching the racialized and feminized logic of Ornamentalism, a bedrock of Western aesthetics and colonialism. In next Friday's action, we will make kinship with decorative plants, transforming the “exotic and extracted” into a multilayered agency of becoming and survival. The event will be followed by the panel talk "Anti-Asian Racism in the Arts" (in German), moderated by Vina Yun.

This Thursday, Mai Ling will give a presentation at the Department of Ortsbezogene Kunst / Site-Specific Art, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien 🐽 It's open to public 🐰

Performative Gathering at 7pm on Friday, the 18th at Brotfabrik Wien @kulturhausbrotfabrik within the festival “Vivências” curated by @depalmieri and @marissa.lobo ❤️‍🔥 From your first taste of amniotic fluids to the everyday rituals of meal prep, food is deeply intertwined with memory, kinship, comfort and care.

It has been brought to our attention that the Donaufestival released a publication reader that contains a very problematic and racist text. The text is not worthy of time or energy as it is written with the very intention of provoking. What, however is problematic is that this text was given space, and released by the same festival that invited Mai Ling and other artists of color under the theme of “Counter Appropriation”. We feel instrumentalized to promote a fake gesture of diversity, as this text proves. Mai Ling would like to bring to task the festival and question its perpetuation of such racism. We invite you to join us live- streaming as we and other artists of the festival issue our statement.

Join us tonight at 6pm on Instagram as Mai Ling cooks at @volkskundemuseumwien. The artist collective Mai Ling will cook and share facts and (mis) understandings related to Asian cuisine. The vital activities of cooking and eating can be experienced in this performance both as cultural and material actions. Afterwards, the museum invites the audience to exchange information on what was seen, heard and tasted over food and drinks.

“Ling's Golden Imperial Shop” is a pop-up store — a food and supplies stopover and a space for conviviality and gathering. It traces a genealogy of elements constituting Mai Ling — as collective bodies and identities — questioning the display and its politics. The shop offers a concoction of objects, music and storytelling touching on intersectional issues of race, gender, sexuality and diaspora as well as politics of body (re)presentation, self-identification, self-stigmatization and the performativity of the “Asian” figure.

Mai Ling re-narrates and re-portrays the once silenced “Mai Ling” (originated from the TV sketch by Gerhard Polt) with collective voices and multi-layered identities, in an effort to finally reclaim her speech, thorough re-appropriation and re-construction of the perception and treatment of gendered and racialized bodies in Western society. The exhibition Who is Mai Ling? showcases the sheer diversity of Mai Ling's artistic and activist projects produced though various means of presentation.