Yang Chihung, world-renowned figure in Chinese contemporary abstract art, opened a discussion at Parsons The New School for Design on 14th March, 2015, attracting students and scholars from New York’s finest art institutions, including Parsons the New School for Design, Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, and Fashion Institute of Technology, which also drew extensive coverage from newspapers like the World Journal, The China Press, Sing Tao Daily and more.
“Asia Week New York” is an annual event that celebrates and promotes Asian art in New York City. The first talk featured a conversation between internationally recognized Asian artist Yang Chihung and Dr. Agnes Hsu on the artist’s creative and scholastic adventure to the West since 1979, followed by screening of Discovery Channel’s Chineseness: Yang Chihung episode. The second talk was given by a notable performance artist Tehching Hsieh, who took the audience through his lifeworks. Yang encouraged the youth by quoting the Chinese motto: “You can learn more by travelling a thousand miles than by reading a thousand books,” successfully ending this forum by reconciling the East and the West with soft power of Asian art.
Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang is an archaeologist and an adviser to UNESCO and publishes on Chinese art and archaeology. She is also the frequent host of Discovery Channel’s series on arts and culture.
Tehching Hsieh was born in 1950. In 1974, Hsieh jumped ship to a pier on the Delaware River, near Philadelphia, and remained as an illegal immigrant for fourteen years until he was granted amnesty in the US in 1988. Hsieh accomplished five One Year Performance from 1978 to 1986 and worked on Thirteen-Year Plan from 1986 to 1999. In his Cage Piece, the artist locked himself in a cage for one year. He was tied to Linda Montano for a year during the Rope Piece. Punched a time clock every hour for a year, his Time Clock Piece has been exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum. Some of his works has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in 2009.