Why Are They So Afraid of the Lotus?

A conceptual "course packet" of readings around and inspired by the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha.

Driven by the central question "What are we learning from artists today?" the second volume of A Series of Open Questions is informed by themes found in the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha, such as cultural hybridization and fluidity of identity, digital and migratory aesthetics, memory and landscape, decentered realities, feminist approaches to storytelling, meditations on death and myth, post-coloniality and decolonization, and women's work as related to cultural politics. The contributions to Why Are They So Afraid of the Lotus? embody Trinh's own weariness around categorization and investigate the ways production can come from and be based in positions of unknowing.  •  Anthony Huberman is the Director and Chief Curator of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco and Founding Director of the Artist's Institute in New York.
  •  Kim Nguyen is the Curator and Head of Programs at the Wattis Institute.
  •  Jeanne Gerrity is the Deputy Director and Head of Publications at the Wattis and has written for such publications as Artforum, Art Agenda, and Frieze.