ASIAN WOMEN ARE NOT | SAD ASIAN GIRLS CLUB

THE PIECE OF ART
Title : Asian Women are not | Artist : Sad Asian Girls Club | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : posters

THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
The Sad Asian Girls Club is a group of artists, which was founded by two graphic design students of the Rhode Island School of Design (United States). They wanted to respond to the prejudices they had suffered in their school as well as in other institutions. They gather with their Asian and American friends and break the silence on their experiences through debates on racism and feminism. Thanks to different artistic projects, they wish to denounce, but also offer a greater visibility to Asian women from all origins around the world. Thus, they produced awareness-raising campaigns and intervened in many institutions.

BACKGROUND
In 2017, Asian-Americans people in the United States represent roughly five percent of the whole population. This community bears racism and stereotypes, but, at the same time,is often praised to be a discreet “model minority”, hardworking and well integrated. For women, this type of stereotypes often involves other sexist stereotypes leading to a double oppression as a result of their status of women from Asian origins.

EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
The project kicked off with an online campaign: the group of artists asked Asian women to finish the following sentence “Asian women are not…”. Then, they received hundreds of suggestions and selected a hundred of them. Sentences refer to the fetishism towards Asian women, the myth of the exemplary integration and other stereotypes that they have to go through. This project targets further non-Asian people. The artists collected these stereotypes so that the public could realise that micro-aggressions do exist and they can be hurtful.