In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Interdisciplinary Artist Charlene Tan.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with filipina-american interdisciplinary artist Charlene Tan.
In this Episode, Charlene shares her background, inspiration, and creative process behind her exhibition, Warp/Weft which pays homage to her Filipino heritage. It discusses her use of traditional Filipino materials like mung beans and ube, the personal connections embedded in her artwork, and the viewers' responses. Charlene's journey as an artist, from childhood to her current exhibitions, is also highlighted, along with insights into the labor-intensive nature of her work, family influences, and the supportive community that has shaped her artistic path.
About Artist Charlene Tan:
Charlene Tan is an interdisciplinary artist, whose work is thematically focused on the immigrant diaspora and its repercussions, post-assimilation identity, and anthropological investigations of nationalism and cultural heritage. Her work is inspired by her Filipina-Chinese-American identity, reconnecting her artistic cultural heritage of tribal weaving patterns of the Philippines. Using found images by means of digital scanning, these images are edited to pair down to the essence of the pattern.
Once free of scale and color, Tan retraces the patterns to attempt to create a muscle memory of a cultural expression that was once commonplace with her ancestors. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in the US, and is part of several private collections. She holds a BA History and Theory of Contemporary Art with a focus on New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. Born in Houston, TX, she lived in the Philippines before moving to San Francisco for her education and work, and is currently a visiting artist at Minnesota Street Project studios.
Follow Charlene on Instagram: @Char.Art.Tan
Learn more about Charlene's art at the Warp/Weft exhibit at re.riddle by CLICKING HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-0423 - AIA - EP024 - Charlene Tan
Artist Charlene Tan: [00:00:00] They refused to support it and they're like, you're not going. So I met their energy and kind and like completely rebelled and like didn't leave my room for almost three weeks.
Host Emily Wilson: Welcome to Art is Awesome. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts. And I've been meeting such great people that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work.
Art is Awesome is now carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9am and 7pm. You can listen live or stream it there.
Charlene Tan was born in Houston, Texas and moved to the Philippines to live with her grandma for [00:01:00] most of her childhood. Now she lives in San Francisco. Charlene's show, Warp/Weft honors her heritage and her grandmother, a weaver and a seamstress. In a series, Research and Remembrance, Charlene traced indigenous Filipino patterns and used traditional Filipino goods like mung beans, pearls, and powder made from ube or purple yam to make the designs.
The show is at re.riddle at San Francisco's Minnesota Street Project through April 30th. Charlene has a BA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her work has been shown at, among other places, Intersection for the Arts, Marin Headland Center for the Arts, and Southern Exposure. Now it's on view as part of the Bay Area Nine at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through May 5th.
We met at re.riddle and looked at her work and then went to her studio across the street. She told me about spending [00:02:00] hours hand gluing her pieces, why she wanted to use food in her art, and how people respond to her work. In front of one of the first pieces in the series. Made with purple yam powder, she talked about using her art to connect with her heritage and with others.
Artist Charlene Tan: I was tracing this indigenous weaving pattern from the Philippines with food products. And I wanted to kind of use materials and things. Food that was very much performing identity and a common denominator when I was here when I came Like from my grandma's house in the Philippines was food products like ube, purple yam Food and like an ice cream or whatever and to kind of connect with fellow first generation kids here and like fellow other Asians and we would talk about tapioca and like [00:03:00] pandan and other things Coconut water, which you couldn't get that.
That was like super exotic. Now, it's like Whole Foods. Just get a carton for very cheap. So I wanted to tell a story visually because people who are not familiar with ube would come in like, why is it violet? Why is it so intense? And can I lick it? And then I just, I can share the story. I was like, exactly what I'm telling you and people Iistantly, like, it's like telling your, your experience, your first experience with it.
Host Emily Wilson: Charlene's work opens up a dialogue with the viewers.
Artist Charlene Tan: The questions kind of come after, like, where is this print from? Why this texture? How did you do this? Where were you born? And I would tell them I was born in Texas out of a luck of a draw. And then I lived in the Philippines out of a luck of a draw too.
And so I feel like I'm a, [00:04:00] Native, but I'm an expat. So this food tells exactly that, like, this purple yam powder.
Host Emily Wilson: When she was very young, Charlene left Texas and went to Manila to live with her grandma. Standing in front of a piece made with hundreds of pearls, Shirlene talked about how she made it to honor her.
Artist Charlene Tan: I was like Velcro with my grandma and we would see markets, market stalls bedecked with fresh water pearls. And that's my most vivid memory of her. And then her jewelry, she always had like a bracelet or a necklace. So I wanted to trace these, this pattern, which is an act of me tracing to make a muscle memory.
And then also kind of, I remember her and I put her bracelets in there too. So like, not only it's just like pearls from Manila, it's like my family's in this. Um, the patterns from my, where my father's from. There's like pink freshwater pearls, black freshwater [00:05:00] pearls. They're different sizes and um, from different regions.
Host Emily Wilson: For another piece in the show, she glued hundreds of the beans that she ate as a child.
Artist Charlene Tan: A smaller version of the big purple yam one right there, the crocodile spirit. It's an homage to the Nalaka. Patterns and I grew up eating mung beans as this crazy pork mung bean and fish sauce thing that you eat with rice in it.
It's acquired taste, but it's home cooking and I wanted to figure out how to use it.
Host Emily Wilson: Hundreds of people came to Charlene's opening at re.riddle. One of them was Frances Ang, a chef who has an acclaimed Fisherman's Wharf restaurant, Abaca.
Artist Charlene Tan: He was just like, I saw the photos, but I didn't understand the extent of it.
So he was just taking super close ups, especially the mung beans, because he's like, no way for real. I'm like, yes way. It was very fun to [00:06:00] see him react because I like how he translates it. It's his inspirations and traditional recipes and that's inspired by the locality of where he is and different techniques.
Because I'm also in that same journey because a lot of these indigenous weaving patterns are inspired by the local flora and fauna and the people of the tribe.
Host Emily Wilson: Lots of labor goes into Charlene's work.
Artist Charlene Tan: I love meticulous, detail-oriented work. For the first half hour, hour, you're like, um, no, no thank you. I'm done. It's actually kind of an endurance sport because it's like going to the gym like you have that half hour You're supposed to be on the treadmill to like get yourself into it And then you start lifting weights after like an eight hour job I would go to the studio and kind of rage make so it would become almost like a meditative thing.
Host Emily Wilson: In school as a kid, Charlene was always drawing. She got in trouble for not writing anything down, but she [00:07:00] would remember everything.
Artist Charlene Tan: It sounds really pretentious, but it was just, I was making sculptures when I was a little baby kid in Philippines. Then I couldn't stop drawing. I would get in trouble cause they were just like, I couldn't retain the class and I never took notes. Cause I would do it all in my head and I would just retain, retain, retain, but like I would just like draw, like whatever I, the person behind, in front of me, or the flower, the flowers in the Kleenex box, whatever.
Host Emily Wilson: Charlene's family didn't want her to be an artist at first.
Artist Charlene Tan: They were like, art people don’t make money? You have to be a nurse or a mailman or an architect or a doctor, you know, like we're poor.
Host Emily Wilson: Charlene went to Mercy High School in Burlingame and she spent all her time in the art department there. Without applying, she got a full scholarship to an art school in Savannah, Georgia, but her parents wouldn't [00:08:00] let her go.
Artist Charlene Tan: They refused to support it and they're like, you're not going. So I, I met their energy and kind and like completely rebelled and like didn't leave my room for almost three weeks. And my mom got really scared and she was like, okay, we're going to get you a little art studio. I'm going to put you in art school here locally.
I'm going to figure it out. And then I met fellow artists there. I was like, how do you do this? They're like, you should try volunteering. At a local art place, like Southern Exposure. And I was like, that's around the corner, let's go.
Host Emily Wilson: Charlene is is thankful for all the people who have supported her. She says she feels lucky that Candice Huey, who she has known for years, curated Warp Weft.
Artist Charlene Tan: Sometimes if I subconsciously reference, like, different works, it's very nice that she catches on. Sometimes [00:09:00] faster than I do. It's been very nice to kind of be understood this way, because it doesn't happen very often.
It's like inclusive, like conversation, and then trying to like bringing them, everyone into the fold, because everyone has a history. Everyone has a journey.
Host Emily Wilson: Like I do every show, I asked Charlene the same three questions. The questions are, when did you know you were an artist, what's some work that has had a big impact on you, and what is the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Charlene Tan: When I first realized I was an artist was when I was working at the San Francisco Museum of Art. In my 20s, 30s, I was terrified because I was coming from a DIY nonprofit, [00:10:00] low, low, low budget world of art handling. And here I was pulling for the first time, being trusted with art grades, like I'm Martin Puryear, down from the loading dock truck area, down the hallway to the elevator, and This thing was massive.
It was the size of like, this studio actually. Which is like 19 feet long and 14 feet wide and, you know, 12 feet high. You know, like that big on a pallet jack. And then someone's on the other side with a pallet jack. And realizing that this artist does this full time. He has a whole team. There's an infrastructure and many people around it, including myself, pulling this massive crate, this blue crate, and it has one of his artworks.
And that's when I knew that like, [00:11:00] this is going to be a very crazy journey because I want to be exactly
The work that had the biggest impact on me was when I was a kid. I'm not sure if you can check the references, um, the Ansel Kiefer, I swear to God he had a lead airplane in a, in a local park in San Francisco that I would play on. Thinking back now, I'm like, this lead object looks super dangerous, but we would like sit on it and take photos and like, um, pretend we were flying with it, you know.
Uh, the most creative and inspiring place in the Bay Area for me is the Headlands Center for the Arts. Because when I was growing up, like in, when I was first starting out to be in the arts, I was, I had friends who were there like consecutively for years, and we would just, we would just You know be invited and like we [00:12:00] become friends with people that were from China and like we just we're all gonna hang out and go to the beach and then they're gonna go to the mystery ball when it was still a thing and you know people would be sleeping in the closets and then wake up and go to the beach you know so whenever I go there and like you just like step out and like look through the door at like this massive green spaces and like I see the history of the amount of people that have gone through there.
It's beautiful. Even if you just want to sit at the beach, I feel like it's my special sanctuary. And it's only like 30 minutes away.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you to our guest, Charlene Tan. Her series, Research and Remembrance, is in the show Warp Weft at re.riddle through April 30th. And thank you for listening to Art is Awesome. [00:13:00] Please follow the show and join us next time for a conversation with Saif Azzuz, a Libyan Yuruk artist who has a show, Cost of Living at the ICA in San Francisco.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by me. By Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. It's carried on KSFP, LP 1 0 2 0.5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with Incompetent Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at Art is Awesome podcast or visit our website till next [00:14:00]time.