No Hurt, No Scar
Loc Nguyen
Opening 03.10.18 6-8pm
Artist Talks 25.10.18 6-7pm
Asian male bodies undergo violent erasure and displacement under the pressures of white homoerotic culture. “No Asians” and “No Rice” are phrases commonly used in digital gay cruising and dating spaces. Acts of racialisation and sexualisation have influenced different gay Asian men to negotiate, construct and perform their bodies whereby the representation of their identities can be positioned alongside white gay masculinity. Some Asian men share headless torso pictures of themselves as a way to gain desirability before revealing their racialised faces. Within these pornographic spaces, the gay Asian male body becomes dissected as a way of disguise.
No Hurt, No Scar explores gay Asian male sexuality and (un)desirability within the interpolating representation between pornography and the everyday. Through documentary modes and intimate monologues collected from interviews with different gay Asian men, multiple voices reveal how gay Asian male bodies and identities become fragmented under racialisation. These faceless men offer their individual experiences, which become stitched together to form a small part of the collected gay Asian male fabric, and the struggles some share within mainstream white homonormativity.