On Coolieisms:
BROOKLYN MUSEUM
The title of the artist’s Coolieisms series (2021–present) points to the denigrated status that Americans assigned to East Asian immigrants as early as the nineteenth century “Coolie” is a slur originally used against migrant indentured laborers from East and South Asia in the British colonial era; it remains in use among the South Asian diaspora (some consider it pejorative while others favor reclamation). In North America, “coolie was used specifically against Chinese immigrants during the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment in the late nineteenth century, which culminated in riots, massacres, and legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. By illuminating this history, yi Hou contextualizes ongoing, racially motivated violence against Asian American communities.
By costuming his subjects, including himself, as historical East Asian figures, yi Hou employs American media and history to explore what he calls “yellow iconicity” reclaiming another slur—as well as the perception of East Asian persons as fungible and identical. In works such as Coolieisms, aka: Leather Daddy’s Highbinder Odalisque (2022), yi Hou depicts a hypermasculine Chinese figure holding his queue, a long braid
worn by Chinese male immigrants until the twentieth century, as a whip. Two other works, Coolieisms, aka: Sly Son Goku turns 23 and Cowboy Kato Coolie, aka: Bruce’s Bitch (both 2021), present self-portrait-like depictions of the artist dressed as Son Goku, the protagonist of the megahit manga and anime franchise Dragon Ball, and as Kato, a character played by Bruce Lee in the 1960s television show The Green Hornet. The
Coolieisms series also references cult homoerotic artists such as Tom of Finland and Bob Mizer, complicating the long-standing American tendency to render Asian men as
extrinsic to traditional masculinity and thus, as yi Hou suggests, to citizenry. ->
JAMES FUENTES
Yi Hou continues his ongoing Coolieisms series, examining the ways in which East Asian-ness has figured within the West's racial imaginary and visual culture. In Coolieisms, aka: The Geary Act’s Rough Trade, yi Hou folds in reference to artistic forbearer Martin Wong’s octagonal Sacred Shroud of Pepe Turcel (1990). Tying Wong’s fetishization of criminality with the longer history of persecution of Chinese Americans in the late 1800s, the work reflects on the Geary Act of 1892, an extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which imposed harsh restrictions on Chinese residents in the US, effectively criminalizing their existence. Homoeroticizing the trope of the tattooed Asian gangster as “rough trade,” yi Hou connects carcerality with racialization and queerness. Encoded across the white prison bar bisecting the painting are numbers corresponding to the letters in Wong’s name, subtly linking the two works together.
With Coolieisms, aka: Born in the USA (Go and Kill the Yellow Man), the artist references the iconic album cover for Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA. Lyrics from the song—“go and kill the yellow man”—are embedded within the stripes of the United States flag, alluding to the history of US imperialism in Asia. In this work, yi Hou subverts Springsteen’s popular image of the All-American man via leather fetish gear, with a drag-like hypermasculinity more reminiscent of Tom of Finland, also making reference to the gay semiotics of the handkerchief code. Sailor Moon Rising aka: Pacific Passenger again destabilizes the American masculine iconic—here, the Navy sailor—through a drag-like costuming and effete posturing. A symbol in the composition’s bottom right corner, a fusion of the Philippine and American flags, further alludes to the colonial relationship between the United States Navy and the Philippines. ->
DOCUMENT JOURNAL
Coolieisms, aka: The Geary Act’s Rough Trade (2023) derives its composition from Martin Wong’s octagonal Sacred Shroud of Pepe Turcel (1990). In the latter, a Black man stands behind iron bars, his brawn barely contained beneath a white undershirt. Yi Hou cranks up that sizzle of sex. His painting features an Asian man and, more so, his rippling muscles. They swell like a pot of boiling broth. A tattooed Chinese dragon writhes across his shoulder blades. His back is turned, but he cocks his head slightly toward us, at once solicitous and menacing. As the title implies, he got thrown in jail for breaching a judicial farce of 1892, which insists he never leaves the house without his certificate of residence. So he has always been a kind of prisoner.
Then he travels some 90 years into the future. In Coolieisms, aka: Born in the USA (Go and Kill the Yellow Man) (2023–24), the American flag faces him the way it did Bruce Springteen on the cover of his 1984 album. But if the Boss is its hero, the yellow man is its enemy. Scrawled across the stripes are grimly sardonic lyrics from the title track. American troops shall gut the gooks. Our guy stands in a counterpoise, absorbed, concurrently a pumped-up prey and just another man on the prowl. He wants to be penetrated, if the star-spangled blue handkerchief on the right side of his leather assless chaps is a reliable indicator. A Manchu-style braid hangs, like a whip, down his back. Lust howls here, carnal and bloody.
The character wears a small gold hoop in his left ear—just like yi Hou. For the Coolieisms series, the artist lends his face to the thousands of Chinese whose exploitation built the transcontinental railroad during the California gold rush. But not his personhood. When severed from its owner, his likeness becomes an avatar, a repository for collective history. It’s quasi-factual. It’s ever-mutating. It’s also resistant to a media landscape that capitalizes on the cheap currency of authenticity. ->
The title of the artist’s Coolieisms series (2021–present) points to the denigrated status that Americans assigned to East Asian immigrants as early as the nineteenth century “Coolie” is a slur originally used against migrant indentured laborers from East and South Asia in the British colonial era; it remains in use among the South Asian diaspora (some consider it pejorative while others favor reclamation). In North America, “coolie was used specifically against Chinese immigrants during the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment in the late nineteenth century, which culminated in riots, massacres, and legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. By illuminating this history, yi Hou contextualizes ongoing, racially motivated violence against Asian American communities.
By costuming his subjects, including himself, as historical East Asian figures, yi Hou employs American media and history to explore what he calls “yellow iconicity” reclaiming another slur—as well as the perception of East Asian persons as fungible and identical. In works such as Coolieisms, aka: Leather Daddy’s Highbinder Odalisque (2022), yi Hou depicts a hypermasculine Chinese figure holding his queue, a long braid
worn by Chinese male immigrants until the twentieth century, as a whip. Two other works, Coolieisms, aka: Sly Son Goku turns 23 and Cowboy Kato Coolie, aka: Bruce’s Bitch (both 2021), present self-portrait-like depictions of the artist dressed as Son Goku, the protagonist of the megahit manga and anime franchise Dragon Ball, and as Kato, a character played by Bruce Lee in the 1960s television show The Green Hornet. The
Coolieisms series also references cult homoerotic artists such as Tom of Finland and Bob Mizer, complicating the long-standing American tendency to render Asian men as
extrinsic to traditional masculinity and thus, as yi Hou suggests, to citizenry. ->
JAMES FUENTES
Yi Hou continues his ongoing Coolieisms series, examining the ways in which East Asian-ness has figured within the West's racial imaginary and visual culture. In Coolieisms, aka: The Geary Act’s Rough Trade, yi Hou folds in reference to artistic forbearer Martin Wong’s octagonal Sacred Shroud of Pepe Turcel (1990). Tying Wong’s fetishization of criminality with the longer history of persecution of Chinese Americans in the late 1800s, the work reflects on the Geary Act of 1892, an extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which imposed harsh restrictions on Chinese residents in the US, effectively criminalizing their existence. Homoeroticizing the trope of the tattooed Asian gangster as “rough trade,” yi Hou connects carcerality with racialization and queerness. Encoded across the white prison bar bisecting the painting are numbers corresponding to the letters in Wong’s name, subtly linking the two works together.
With Coolieisms, aka: Born in the USA (Go and Kill the Yellow Man), the artist references the iconic album cover for Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA. Lyrics from the song—“go and kill the yellow man”—are embedded within the stripes of the United States flag, alluding to the history of US imperialism in Asia. In this work, yi Hou subverts Springsteen’s popular image of the All-American man via leather fetish gear, with a drag-like hypermasculinity more reminiscent of Tom of Finland, also making reference to the gay semiotics of the handkerchief code. Sailor Moon Rising aka: Pacific Passenger again destabilizes the American masculine iconic—here, the Navy sailor—through a drag-like costuming and effete posturing. A symbol in the composition’s bottom right corner, a fusion of the Philippine and American flags, further alludes to the colonial relationship between the United States Navy and the Philippines. ->
DOCUMENT JOURNAL
Coolieisms, aka: The Geary Act’s Rough Trade (2023) derives its composition from Martin Wong’s octagonal Sacred Shroud of Pepe Turcel (1990). In the latter, a Black man stands behind iron bars, his brawn barely contained beneath a white undershirt. Yi Hou cranks up that sizzle of sex. His painting features an Asian man and, more so, his rippling muscles. They swell like a pot of boiling broth. A tattooed Chinese dragon writhes across his shoulder blades. His back is turned, but he cocks his head slightly toward us, at once solicitous and menacing. As the title implies, he got thrown in jail for breaching a judicial farce of 1892, which insists he never leaves the house without his certificate of residence. So he has always been a kind of prisoner.
Then he travels some 90 years into the future. In Coolieisms, aka: Born in the USA (Go and Kill the Yellow Man) (2023–24), the American flag faces him the way it did Bruce Springteen on the cover of his 1984 album. But if the Boss is its hero, the yellow man is its enemy. Scrawled across the stripes are grimly sardonic lyrics from the title track. American troops shall gut the gooks. Our guy stands in a counterpoise, absorbed, concurrently a pumped-up prey and just another man on the prowl. He wants to be penetrated, if the star-spangled blue handkerchief on the right side of his leather assless chaps is a reliable indicator. A Manchu-style braid hangs, like a whip, down his back. Lust howls here, carnal and bloody.
The character wears a small gold hoop in his left ear—just like yi Hou. For the Coolieisms series, the artist lends his face to the thousands of Chinese whose exploitation built the transcontinental railroad during the California gold rush. But not his personhood. When severed from its owner, his likeness becomes an avatar, a repository for collective history. It’s quasi-factual. It’s ever-mutating. It’s also resistant to a media landscape that capitalizes on the cheap currency of authenticity. ->
BROOKLYN RAIL
Rail: Can you talk about Cowboy Kato Coolie, aka: Bruce's Bitch, (2021)?
Yi Hou: This piece is based off the character Kato, that Bruce Lee played in the TV show The Green Hornet from the sixties. Bruce plays the martial artist valet of the protagonist, The Green Hornet. The character of Kato is really interesting in the history of “yellow” iconicity because Bruce Lee specifically chose to perform the character of Kato in a way to destabilise conventional racialised semiotics—the relationship between Asian masculinity, subordinacy, submissiveness, for example. The painting thinks about this also in relation to leather, kink, and queer cultural depictions of hypermasculinity, of artists like Tom of Finland for example. Such depictions of hypermasculinity are interesting—it’s about masculine desire, sure, but also I find it to be a form of drag, excessive male drag. It’s this kind of excessive queer performance of masculinity that I feel destabilises the integrity of heteromasculinity, though it’s also not without its problems of course. There is also the connection between race and masculinity too, specifically the feminization of yellow men, how East Asian men are precluded from conventional masculinity. That’s something that was a part of anti-Chinese rhetoric in the turn of the twentieth century too. There’s this fascinating historical document, published in 1902 by the American Federation of Labor, titled “Meat Vs Rice: American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism, which Shall Survive?” It’s one of the inspirations behind my body of work called “Coolieisms.”
Rail: Could we talk more about this idea of labor and use value and exchange value, especially with the “Coolieisms” series? Can you talk about how you feel your labor is being used, and what part feels like labor to you? And this is a really important subject within your work, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Yi Hou: In the painting Coolieisms, AKA: Leather Daddy Highbinder Odalisque, (2022) the figure has the Chinese character for labor tattooed on his left forearm. I mentioned before the history of Chinese people in America, and alluded to the relationship between labor and racial capitalism. The labor of people of color is so deeply embedded within the foundations of America, but we intentionally forget. It becomes commodity fetishised in a way—we forget all the social relations which precondition our current existence, or America’s existence as a global superpower. ->
Rail: Can you talk about Cowboy Kato Coolie, aka: Bruce's Bitch, (2021)?
Yi Hou: This piece is based off the character Kato, that Bruce Lee played in the TV show The Green Hornet from the sixties. Bruce plays the martial artist valet of the protagonist, The Green Hornet. The character of Kato is really interesting in the history of “yellow” iconicity because Bruce Lee specifically chose to perform the character of Kato in a way to destabilise conventional racialised semiotics—the relationship between Asian masculinity, subordinacy, submissiveness, for example. The painting thinks about this also in relation to leather, kink, and queer cultural depictions of hypermasculinity, of artists like Tom of Finland for example. Such depictions of hypermasculinity are interesting—it’s about masculine desire, sure, but also I find it to be a form of drag, excessive male drag. It’s this kind of excessive queer performance of masculinity that I feel destabilises the integrity of heteromasculinity, though it’s also not without its problems of course. There is also the connection between race and masculinity too, specifically the feminization of yellow men, how East Asian men are precluded from conventional masculinity. That’s something that was a part of anti-Chinese rhetoric in the turn of the twentieth century too. There’s this fascinating historical document, published in 1902 by the American Federation of Labor, titled “Meat Vs Rice: American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism, which Shall Survive?” It’s one of the inspirations behind my body of work called “Coolieisms.”
Rail: Could we talk more about this idea of labor and use value and exchange value, especially with the “Coolieisms” series? Can you talk about how you feel your labor is being used, and what part feels like labor to you? And this is a really important subject within your work, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Yi Hou: In the painting Coolieisms, AKA: Leather Daddy Highbinder Odalisque, (2022) the figure has the Chinese character for labor tattooed on his left forearm. I mentioned before the history of Chinese people in America, and alluded to the relationship between labor and racial capitalism. The labor of people of color is so deeply embedded within the foundations of America, but we intentionally forget. It becomes commodity fetishised in a way—we forget all the social relations which precondition our current existence, or America’s existence as a global superpower. ->