The Decolonized Eye

From the late 1980s to the present, artists of Filipino descent in the United States have produced a challenging and creative movement. In The Decolonized Eye, Sarita Echavez See shows how these artists have engaged with the complex aftermath of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines.

Focusing on artists working in New York and California, See examines the overlapping artistic and aesthetic practices and concerns of filmmaker Angel Shaw, painter Manuel Ocampo, installation artist Paul Pfeiffer, comedian Rex Navarrete, performance artist Nicky Paraiso, and sculptor Reanne Estrada to explain the reasons for their strangely shadowy presence in American culture and scholarship. Offering an interpretation of their creations that accounts for their queer, decolonizing strategies of camp, mimesis, and humor, See reveals the conditions of possibility that constitute this contemporary archive.

By analyzing art, performance, and visual culture, The Decolonized Eye illuminates the unexpected consequences of America's amnesia over its imperial history.

Introduction: Foreign in a Domestic Sense

Part I. Staging the Sublime
1. An Open Wound: Angel Shaw and Manuel Ocampo
2. A Queer Horizon: Paul Pfeiffer's Disintegrating Figure Studies

Part II. Pilipinos Are Punny, Freud Is Filipino
3. Why Filipinos Make Pun(s) of One Another: The Sikolohiya/Psychology of Rex Navarrete's Stand-up Comedy
4. "He will not always say what you would have him say": Loss and Aural (Be)Longing in Nicky Paraiso's House/Boy
Conclusion: Reanne Estrada, Identity, and the Politics of Abstraction
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index