The Consequences of Orientalist Tropes: The Moulding and Remoulding of East and Southeast Asian Femininity

Growing up, expressing my femininity and cultural identity through my art was a form of emotional refuge. As an East Asian woman born and raised in Southeast Asia, I always felt a sense of responsibility—almost a vesseled obligation to highlight forms of my heritage into my creations—a living archival embodiment of identity, history, and ancestry. Back then, as I shared the love for my art, knowing the context of who would be seeing it, my positionality then, being surrounded by my native heritage, the matter of ethics was rarely considered. It is now eight months since I moved to England for my cultural studies and my group was tasked to focus our curatorial theme on Mariko Mori’s physical archives, a Japanese-born artist living in the West, known for her cyber futuristic and subtle commentary on culture, identity and otherworldliness. As I approach this subject, a slight connection is felt—a sense of perplexity that haunts me in subtle ways as I analyse her former works. In Play with me, 1994, she wears a sexualised cyborg costume, standing outside a Tokyo electronics store, presenting herself as a plastic figurine—a frequent commodification of Japanese women stereotyped into being submissive and plastic (Finnegan, 2013). When viewed through Western lens, can this performance parody of irony counteract systems of exotication and fetishisation? Art is unfortunately no longer a matter of simply expressing, sharing and gaining. The possibility that my art—what was once a beacon of pride, an indisputable safety and security refuge, now becomes a symbolism of possible controversy: colonial narratives, deeply embedded orientalist tropes, the possibility of hypersexualisation, commodifications and contextual misrepresentations, simply unsettles me. The interconnectedness of East Asian culturally-feminine art and representation through the consumption of the Western lens bring out complex ethical implications. I approach this, while excited to share the cultural aesthetic and embodiment of my femininity and emotions, will consider the idea of autonomy, body politics, and representation in Western context, and analyse orientalist tropes—through Asian women’s self-authored art and media. 

In Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989), cultural theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha critiques the way in which non-Western women are represented, written about and silenced in academic, ethnographic and feminist discourses. She ventures to assert that Western and patriarchal institutions often claim to give voice to women of colour, while 

simultaneously reinscribing colonial and patriarchal authority. The title itself, a subtle foreshadowing of three overlapping forms of otherness: as a woman, a non-white/colonised subject and as the “Other” in academic systems. She pricks the bubble of male Western complacency in their innate capacity to appropriate the forms for interpreting the lives of women of colour, in terms which will elicit a salutary self-consciousness (Grimshaw, 1991). The inscription of colonial authority makes it impossible for the self-authorship of Asian feminine art to be fully seen, credited and appreciated for what is seen rawly—but instead, perceived in the distorted, postcolonial lens of the contextual barricades of hypersexualisation, gentrification and misogyny. 

But how exactly, do power structures—race, gender, class—convey and bestow, while operating through sexualised imagery towards East Asian women? The word “cute” is one of the three under-theorised aesthetic categories in cultural theorist Sianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (2012). The word “cute”, usually associated with the idea of smallness, helplessness, round, soft, vulnerable textures (With the standard East Asian woman having most of these physical traits, as opposed to the standard Western woman), infantilised ideals are hypersexualised and juxtaposed with classic, respectable ideals (beauty, sublime). These feminised fabrications of terms are constructed by colonial and patriarchal institutions formed by the West to complement the aesthetics in contemporary, late-capitalist culture (Porte, 2012)—with the word “cute” being widely a minor, affective response towards racialised depictions of East Asian women: “Hello Kitty”, anime girls and “kawaii” and “lolita” culture (Porte, 2012). This surfaces how Asian femininity is stereotyped as docile, non-threatening, eroticised, while having a sense of child-like innocence—advancing dangerous assumptions such as them being sadistically powerless, undignified, domestic, to the point of being a “sex” doll-like object. 

Thinking back on this, I approach Mariko Mori’s early cyber-girl personas—floating, doll-like, ethereal—both play into the critique of the exoticised “techno-geisha” image in Western lens. My research group came to the consensus of printing a life-sized image of her, using the image as a means for marketing for our exhibition installation. In contrast, our vitrine showcased a less parodic, more ambiguous side of Mori’s work. I realised that Mori is an artist that loves tackling nuances between mystery and dimensionality. Is there a reason behind the complicity in addressing these issues in her work? Is it simply an act of unintentional ignorance? Or is it possibly an intentional foreshadowing; an parodic act tackling the nuances of power, otherworldliness, and East Asian identity? Whatever her reason, what are the ethics when seen through the Western euphoria—will her works be received in a way where it helps deconstruct such ideals on Asian femininity, proving progressivity, or will it prove dire—eliciting the stereotypes further? 

It is no doubt that East Asian women artists (Mariko Mori, Yayoi Kusama) are perceived as groundbreaking, bringing about global celebration as they fuse Eastern identity with global, often Western, themes—cyber futurism, surrealism, ethereality, and the body. However, it is important to understand that with such praise comes a hidden form of colonial positionality—through Western contextualisation, both artists are placed in the realm within an “Oriental” otherness—emphasizing a stark contrast in their Japanese identity to Euro-American art traditions (Lee, 2016). For example, both artists blend traditional Japanese motifs with Western avant-garde forms (minimalism, sci-fi, pop art), creating a hybridity of cultural aesthetics that is “exotic” to the Western audiences. In Woman, Native, Other: Postcoloniality and Feminism, Thinh highlights the reason for such a commodity. She argues that feminism is not a ready-made suit one slips into, but one of measure, resisting universalised feminism and insisting on culturally specific, self-defined forms. This commodity has been long afflicted by Eurocentric feminism, having long universalised the category of what it means to be “woman”, thereby erasing cultural, racial, and geopolitical differences. As Thinh argues, violence through repetition of colonial logics is shown in this mode of universality as the Western, once again speaks for the Other, rather than letting her speak. 

Following the present and evergoing popularity of East Asian women artists, it is apparent that the Asian art and exploration of femininity is always openly represented to the West. Highly marketed, constantly critiqued upon, dissected, readily interpreted and nit-picked—whether or not for the sake of untethering orientalist ideologies. However, one must consider the implications of how hypervisibility can do more harm than good. In Anne Anlin Cheng’s book Orientalism: A Feminist Theory for the Yellow Women (2021), Cheng argues that the idea of Asian femininity is constructed not as personhood, but one of tangibility—as ornament, decor, and surface object. This hypervisibility enforcement within this results in a denial of agency from the other, denies complexity of Asian femininity—a toxic surplus not a matter of invisibility but one where tropes of sexualised labels, objectification and condemnation are projected onto the bodies. “She is seen too much and not seen at,” a commodity in Asian femininity within the Western realm, where her voice is sure to be heard, but not listened to and understood. 

During our presentation for our installation, a lecturer brought up a crucial point on ethics pertaining to our portrayal of Mori and the nuances of hypervisibility that comes with it.  Although harmless, our perceptive interpretations and parodic marketing of Mori that we ventured upon may be paradoxed—I, although born and raised East Asian, am bestowing my anti-orientalist pedagogies through her, in London, a city in the Western hemisphere. Am I contributing to this very act of treason which I have contested? Even through the lens of my non-institutionalised native East Asian self—are my actions of using her as an object of research a form of ironic barbarism that once again, put her as the central focus? This nuanced hypothesis although irresolute, it irrefutably encapsulates the profundity of dominant Western frameworks; a never-ending haunting that loops in a cycle caused by the canonical fact of power, domination, and sexism. 

Western frameworks and ethnography demand legibility—for the other to always speak, confess and explain herself and while doing so, but the subject in a frame of objectivity and dissection. An example—in the 1960s during the Vietnam war, Western photographers often depicted Vietnamese women as victims or “exoticised spies”, portraying these marginalised communities (also known as her) as the dangerous Other. And as decades past, this ongoing cycle of exoticisation caused many Asian women in the West to strive and make their work as “seen” as possible, with the hopes of contextual reclamation, but in actual fact, may unintentionally cause more harm. This is where the ambiguity of Asian women’s art plays an integral role in shielding tropes embedded by the patriarchal West. In Woman, Native, Other and one of her films Reassemblage, Trinh presents opacity not as lack, but a deliberate political stance. Instead of trying to be “understood” by the West, Trinh suggests refusing full transparency. Although highly aestheticised, Mori’s use of cyborg imagery, abstraction, sci-fi repetition while maintaining feminine elements of her identity may function as a shield from hypervisibility—a strategic opacity to counter orientalist tropes and refusing straightforward interpretation. Trinh believes that when the other speaks, it means to betray and to be silent is to lie. This foreshadows a paradox emphasizing the trap of representation: visibility is a form of discipline and to resist it is to protect—a refusal to be read, decoded and domesticated by the white gaze. In the Asia Art Archive in America, Hong Kong-based researcher Michelle Wong critiques the standard Euro-American archive models and introduces Asian perspectives—archives in Asian contemporary art often operate as partial, informal and affectively driven (Wong, 2017). In the eyes of the West, The Dragon Lady is loud, ferocious and spits out fire, but ultimately not, essentially an equal—instead, she is awed at, admired, exteriorised upon as an object of entertainment—she is a racial mirage, and nothing more. 

During the group’s discussion on Mori’s portrayal of otherworldliness, ethics on opacity was one of the key answers to Mori’s discourses of ambiguity through her feminine art. We decided on highlighting Mori’s sense of subtle ambiguity throughout the vitrine, dossier and booklet. However, according to Trinh, if voice is a political dilemma—and speaking about Asian femininity is to enter a colonising structure, how exactly do we advocate for a non-linear, disruptive form of expression, while being authentic in our representation of Asian femininity? Or maybe, the question instead should be, as Asian women obliviously moulded by Western frameworks—a clear colonial tactic, how do we remould ourselves and stand firm through our roots, while avoiding orientalist tropes? How do we voice, however subtle, to those that have wronged, stereotyped us, that we are equal, without being perceived as ignorant? Should we even need to prove our standing in this region? Why do we need to try so hard? 

With these arguments in mind, the choice to remould ourselves is long about “returning” to a pure, untainted “root”—the idea of it has been long weaponised by colonial powers to conform Asian women to please. To truly reform, is to claim multiplicity—to be a hybrid, ever-contradictory, complex and fragmented. Resisting narrative closure or comprehension in works, creating new identities and subcultures that defy legibility. It is a crucial act of political refusal to be easily legible, rebelling from fitting into categories framed by the West (Anzaldúla, 1987). To do so with the use of aesthetics is a form of protest, an act of active, messy, contradictory yet unresolved, silent rebellion that is there to disrupt the dominant West’s desire to “consume”, but to merely be and become, and not have been. 

The painful truth is that racialised femininity under white supremacy, will always be demanded to prove their right to be there—the idea to be further read as human, worthy and equal. In actuality, it is the contrary—one does not owe anyone proof of personhood. The pressure amongst Asian women is the colonial doing—they make them work twice as hard to be seen as half as capable. In other words, we simply and effortlessly be. This is not assimilation, nor performance, but instead defiance by existing without permission. 

The Dragon Lady, although constantly berated by the West, holds a sacred resonance. She does not correct or explain; something the dominant West can never decipher, and yet all so familiar in the East—she simply creates art and exists with integrity. And with that, unbeknownst, she defies all odds—remaining intransigent to the noise brought forth to her. 

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