The collective CFGNY continually turns to the concept “vaguely Asian,” which is situated within a framework of shared material migration histories, racialized associations, and asynchronous points of connection. Antithetical to the idea of “vaguely Asian” are concerns with authenticity, singular origins, and complete knowability. Rather than defining the concept through negation or what it is not, CFGNY conceives “vaguely Asian” as an ongoing, nebulous, and far-reaching project that spills from the space between policy, diaspora, and everyday lived experience. This expansive frame informing CFGNY encourages a collaborative ethos that acknowledges existing and potential pluralities.

Clothing and fashion are often registered on a visual level. The sense of style we perceive through sight happens alongside visual cues that signify one’s race and gender. By engaging with fashion, CFGNY hopes to intervene in this perceptual process, leveraging garments as a tool to comment and act on the ways race and gender function in our daily lives. The project views fashion and fabrics as a vehicle for probing affect and social signifiers through materials, including people, ideas, and aesthetics. For the collective, what initially began as an exploration of the “vaguely Asian” through fashion has since expanded into mediums such as sculpture, installation, writing, and photography.

Refashioning was first presented at Japan Society in New York in 2022. The current iteration of the exhibition includes a re-creation of CFGNY’s initial contribution to Refashioning in the next gallery, alongside newly commissioned work in this gallery. In the new work, CFGNY explores elements of Japanese American history in mid-20th century California that were unfolding concurrently with the activities of Japan Society, which was founded in 1907 in New York. These interwoven bicoastal narratives of Japanese life in the US draw on diverse sources, including archival journal entries, letters, reports, interviews, secondary texts, and government publications.In this gallery, the collective utilized handmade stuffed animals as stand-ins for human subjects in snapshot-style photographs. These images were taken at various locations that trace CFGNY’s research into Japanese American history on the West Coast. The locations in this series include Santa Anita Park, Angel Island, the Terminal Island fishing village, Manzanar, Suehiro Cafe, and the grave site of the activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya. Reminiscent of a road trip, pilgrimage, or meetup, the snapshots are paired with formal family portraits taken with Alan Miyatake of Toyo Miyatake Studio. Founded in 1923, this family-run photo studio has been continuously documenting Japanese American life in the Los Angeles area for more than three generations. The location of these photographs are linked to histories of racialization, with Japanese American people often described in dehumanizing or animalistic terms. Each stuffed animal embodies aspects of this history through their cute, queer aesthetic that embraces imperfections and deformities. In a way, cuteness tempers the brute monstrosity of this racialization, making its domineering force diminutive and porous to alternative channels of influence: the cute object, operating from a position of powerlessness, seduces the stronger party into a relationship of care.

The sound installation in the center of the gallery is inspired by an interview with Lillian Matsumoto, a survivor of the Manzanar concentration camp, by the National Park Service in 2006. Members of CFGNY read selections of texts from archival sources, their voices intermittently obscured by the sound of wind and other obstructions. A paper wall, monumental in size, appears materially fragile and belies the suggestion that even an extensive archive is able to encompass the entirety of a collective narrative.

Individual narratives become collective memories when entered into an archive. CFGNY’s interaction with the vast and unruly archives of California Japanese Americans points to the impossibility of fully capturing the entirety of a person or people through recordkeeping. While images and recordings are often used to speak for the past, CFGNY’s project pushes against impulses toward exceptionalism or singularity and invites a holding space of unknowing. The gaps in an archive can be filled continuously, infinitely, and remain wanting for more.