Dancing on My Own

Starred review from April 8, 2024
This exhilarating debut essay collection from art curator Wu uses cultural artifacts as springboards to reflect on connection, sexuality, and the immigrant experience. In “A Model Childhood,” Wu recounts how he was inspired by artist Ken Okiishi to create an exhibition displaying the miscellany Wu’s parents had kept from his childhood, suggesting that the preservation of McDonald’s toys, piggy banks, and plushies stemmed from a scarcity mindset borne of his parents’ move from Myanmar to the U.S. in the late 1990s. Fashion designer Telfar Clemens’s “downmarket collaborations with brands like Budweiser, Eastpak, UGG, and White Castle” blur the line between high- and low-fashion and create the possibility of “a more progressive cultural class,” Wu argues in “For Everyone.” Several pieces meditate on the liberatory potential of dance, as in “Party Politics,” where Wu discusses how at raves created by queer people of color, “partying performs a dual, somewhat self-contradictory social function: it can let you perform an identity, and it can let you forget you have one at all.” Wu blends tender personal reflection with probing analysis of the works of Ching Ho Cheng and James Baldwin, among other artists and writers. Throughout, exegesis of Robyn’s music provides a thematic through line, expounding on what the pop star’s songs can teach listeners about staking one’s independence and finding joy amid sadness. This dynamic first outing heralds the arrival of a promising new talent. Agent: Clare Mao, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.

April 15, 2024
A young writer riffs on family, race, fashion, dancing, and relationships. Wu, who is involved in a variety of museum-curation projects, weaves himself in and out of this bold collection of seven densely packed personal essays. The title comes from a song by Swedish singer Robyn, who also appears throughout the text. "A Model Childhood," focusing on his mother, ranges widely: clutter in his family home and the need to organize it and let stuff go; getting along with relatives; video games; family shopping at Costco; Maggie Lee's film Mommy, about her mother's passing; Ken Okiishi's photographic collage Wish I Were Here; and an installation Wu put together of stuff from his parent's house and his imagining of the closing party he'd give with dancing and Robyn singing. "For Everyone" is about "cultural consumption" and the author's experience working with art and living artists as an intern at the Whitney Museum, while questioning whom museums are for. In the same piece, Wu expresses his desire to get a popular unisex Telfar bag made by a young Liberian American designer whom Wu then profiles. In "Vaguely Asian," the author delves into what it means to be Asian through the lens of the art fashion collective CFGNY. At a music festival in New York City, Wu describes the dance floor environment as a "place you couldn't resist and the one you attempted to avoid at all costs." Among numerous other topics, the author explores his experiences with drugs; clubbing in Berlin; dating apps, Ching Ho Cheng's psychedelic painting Chemical Garden and its place in "queer ecology"; and Tseng Kwong Chi's "selfie's" photo art. Wu closes with a wistful piece on his visit to Istanbul and James Baldwin's time there. These smart, sly essays will appeal to lovers of both pop and museum culture.

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