Taiwan Can Help: First Island Chain (#link) (2024) Original Acrylic Painting by Dean Anthony Brink

Always asked “Where are you from” as a visible minority in Taiwan, this painting deconstructs (or taunts) the reliance on categories to situate themselves and others, to question the role of this question in meeting others. I enjoy answering that “I am from Taiwan,” along the lines of my great grandma (the only American-born in my family) said “I am American” never revealing her European origins to us. Then, I will invariably be asked, “Really, where are you from?” and I go through a litany of places I’ve lived in Taiwan. But, if they are sincere and tell me where they were born, I will tell them more. I try to build a better community for immigrants in Taiwan. Why not ask, “what languages can you speak?” Or, “I grew up in ____...” to share something of oneself and share the vulnerability of mutual others, not the dominant speaking to the exception, the invisible, the near-nothing, as if a blemish in homogeneity. It’s a problem of reframing narratives of origin and meaning as a shared parallel human thing, rooting out hierarchical sorting machines that scale to categories as if concepts.

Materials used:

acrylic paints and pens

Details:

• Acrylic painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 40 x 50 x 2cm (unframed) / 40 x 50cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Abstract
• Subject: Transportation and maps