Kwan Tang

Jenny Tang studies modern and contemporary art and visual culture. Her interdisciplinary research centers on the relation between race, subjectivity, and aesthetics. Her dissertation project examines aesthetics of the body in mid-twentieth century (1930-45) Atlantic modernism through a carceral lens.

This project revisits the archives of canonical modernism to excavate the role played by nation-states, border controls, and citizenship and immigration laws in shaping the art and visual culture of this period. From the one-drop rule and anti-miscegenation laws to Japanese American incarceration and Chinese exclusion, what else was at stake in depicting, displacing, and deforming bodies at mid-century?

Jenny is currently a 2020-21 Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NY.