ABSTRACT
This chapter engages intersectional method against the performance of intersectionality by exploring the work of Nikki S. Lee who mines these interstitial spaces in her provocative visual art. The art world eagerly embraced both concept and artist, variously comparing her shapeshifting portraits to those of Cindy Sherman, her cross-cultural posturing to the photography of Tseng Kwong Chi, and her race or gender passing to the performance art of Eleanor Antin and Adrian Piper. Asians assume an uneasy place in the US as both people of color and “model minority,” ignored as a voting bloc and rendered absent in most demographic metrics of racial inequality. A token of its slipperiness as a category, ethnic groups counted as “Asian American” earn among the highest and lowest household incomes in the US, but it is only the former statistic that gets airplay.
