Artist Statement

I'm interested in visual culture as dynamic process: how people are represented, how it shapes public perception, and in turn, the impact it has on individual subjective experience. It's empowering to approach art as a process of cultural production: I'm participating in creating the culture we live in, and insofar as meaning is a function of cultural context, in my own small way through my art, I can create social change. By combining poignant narrative with unexpected humor and latent stereotype, I shine light on the absurdity otherwise hidden behind the apparent naturalness of a social conditioning heavily determined by structures of dominance. My work is in part about creating space from the margins in the mainstream, creating space in the culture—whether it be that of family, civic community or corporate media—for all of us to be just as we are, rather than how the dominant culture tells us to be.

Bio

Scott Tsuchitani (he/they) is a San Francisco-based visual and media artist and feminist cultural studies scholar. Scott’s art practice-as-research explores how tactical public and online art intervention can transform racial common sense, with a focus on the public museum. His interventions have impacted racial discourse through the generation of dialogue and debate in social and mainstream media, as well as academic press. Scott’s work has been shown in museums and galleries in 12 states, presented in Europe and Asia, and published in academic books and journals in art history, museum studies, and Asian and Asian American studies such as Queering Contemporary Asian American Art; Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics; Asian America Through the Lens; Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism; Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group; and Buddhism in America. As a filmmaker, Scott has worked alongside Oscar and Emmy Award-winning filmmakers on transnational productions in Cambodia and South Korea, and his own documentary, Meeting at Tule Lake, has aired on national cable and regional PBS broadcast. Scott has a PhD in cultural studies and two master’s degrees in engineering. He began his professional life in the medical device industry where he co-authored patents on two critical care devices.


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