In Between: Interview with Christopher K. Ho

Born in Hong Kong and raised in the United States, artist and curator Christopher K. Ho often uses the term “global citizen” as an alternative identifier to describe immigrant artists like himself. 

His most recent works explore journeys or locations in between worlds as a way to access identity. In “CX 888,” a solo, research-heavy presentation that was part of de Sarthe gallery’s six-week residency program in 2018, Hong Kong, deck chairs arranged in two-seater rows and accompanying “inflight entertainment” screens mimicked the interior of an airplane. The title itself referenced Cathay Pacific’s daily transnational flight from Hong Kong to New York, via Vancouver, and tracked Ho’s own childhood travels with vintage photographs from colonial-era Hong Kong and Hawaii, where he would regularly visit with his family. This was followed by “Aloha to the World at the Don Ho Terrace” (2018), where a 38-foot-tall printed banner transformed the balcony of New York’s Bronx Museum into the façade of the Miramar at Waikiki—a hotel co-owned by Ho’s family that was once a major tourist attraction in Hawaii, but which no longer exists. Ho christened the terrace after the famed American singer, with whom he coincidentally shares the same surname, as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that he’s often asked if they’re related and to probe the issue of racial stereotyping. 

Ho similarly tackles interstitial spaces and identity in his curatorial practice; for example, an early exhibition, “Unpacking” (1999), took place at his graduate school apartment while in the process of moving out, and comprised the personal objects of 11 artists selected by himself and co-curator Cletus Dalglish-Schommer. More recently, “The Chicago Effect: Redefining the Middle” (2014) at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago called upon local artists to reflect on the “middle” as both a geographical location and political orientation.

I met up with Ho on the eve of the opening of his installation Dear John (2017/19) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Amid rainbow carpeting and heart cut-outs that recall a universal feeling—the whimsy of first love and heartbreak—we discussed the ideas that have informed his many site-specific projects over the last 20 years. 

Your practice consists of using different types of materials—what were you drawn to when you were first starting out?

I began like so many installation or multimedia artists: with painting. It was the earliest love of mine in art. I was part of a generation where that medium was questioned and questioned really thoroughly, and many painters shifted over into other site-specific or post-minimalist practices, myself included. So painting would be the short answer.

How did that shift come about? 

Well, I think the jump from painting to what we call “non-painting” was quite sudden. It happened in school when I was an undergrad, and so it was a quick relinquishing of one love and a quick falling in love with another set of parameters, like sited parameters. After that, I would say the practice evolved along with, or, I hope, slightly ahead of the field. So I think that there was a point when site specificity was, for instance, the most urgent and interesting type of a practice out there in the late ’90s and early 2000s. And I began to question that urgency around 2003 or 2004. That evolved along with the practices of other artists, as well. So, the first big change was from painting to site specificity. 

And then the second one—from site specificity with whatever comes after—was independent curating. Around 2001, I actually co-curated a site-specific project with Regine Basha and Omar Lopez-Chahoud in Brewster, which is a small town upstate [New York]. The three of us invited maybe ten or so other curators to choose locations around this small town and invite artists to intervene. So there were some 70 artists who participated that first round, and we did it for two years thinking that it could foster an ongoing relationship with the town. And I think for me that was really an important turn, insofar as it solidified my commitment to site specificity as a curator, rather than as an artist.

How do you consider site-specificity now—for example, with Dear John (2017/19)?

Dear John was first shown at a gallery within Hotchkiss, my high school, and it was designed specifically for that space. It was a little odd because the site, despite being a traditional white-wall gallery, was unique in the sense that it was in Connecticut and the gallery itself was located inside a high school. So I think that added a layer to it.

For me, showing Dear John at Hotchkiss was less about the kind of parameters of the gallery itself and more about it being in a high school—specifically my high school. So I think that there were a lot of personal connections there, and I wanted to make a piece that hinged on personal memory. And I don’t necessarily mean personal as in my memory, but personal as in the kind of memories and experiences that we might collectively have of high school. Hence the theme of first love.

Your residency and exhibition at de Sarthe was your first presentation in Hong Kong. Did you feel like your work was received differently there, where you were born, compared to the US, where you’ve lived for a while but also where you might be viewed as an Asian-American minority?

I left [Hong Kong] when I was four, so, for me, it felt really good for once in my life to be among people who look like me, and be able to address concerns like Chinese diaspora. The experience actually presented a context that is mind-blowing to me, having never experienced it as an adult. 

To be able to unabashedly address concerns like diaspora or transitional spaces without being put in a niche or a sub-category was amazing because every time we—you and I—talk about identity in the United States, 70 percent of the discourse is already made up for us. So we don’t really get an opportunity to formulate the discussion the way we might if we started from zero.

And it cuts both ways. What makes it hard is that I’m self-categorizing as an Asian artist. There are positives to that, too, career-wise. There are also negatives, but whatever. That’s part of the 70 percent that’s already made up for us.

You seem to have struggled with the idea of social hierarchy in previous projects. For example, in “Privileged White People” (2013) you looked back at the 1990s—an era of American hegemony and prosperity—through photoshopped portraits of President Bill Clinton and actor James van der Beek of Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003) fame. In the context of Asian diaspora in the US, Chinese people are actually perceived as the majority. How do you reconcile your own privilege, being a Chinese-American citizen in New York?

How do you reconcile that? It’s a good question. I can think of three possible paths forward. One is the most counterintuitive, and that would be to accept the privileged status of Chinese as a dominant Asian category and to work with that somehow. The second would be to affine with China but be the radical in China and agitate in the best way you can as an artist, especially one with a foreign passport. The third would be to try to bring together a, for lack of a better word, coalition of different ethnicities—whether it’s Latino and Chinese, or Southeast Asian and Japanese—and to think about that as a kind of community building.