New York exhibition celebrates awakening of Asian-American identity in the 1970s

Asian Americans have a reputation for being apolitical, passive members of society. But that is not so, and has never been so, says Ryan Wong, curator of "Serve the People: The Asian American Movement in New York", an exhibition now on at the Interference Archive in the Big Apple.

The exhibition, which runs until February 23, brings together posters, artworks, photography, magazines and music produced by social and political activist groups that were active in the city during the 1970s. It also shines a light on the years that saw the birth of the term - and the concept of - "Asian American".

"The idea is to look at the identity of Asian Americans in a political context," Wong says in an office of the Interference Archive, a Brooklyn-based organisation that focuses on documenting materials created by social movements. "It's focused on the Asian-American movement, a constellation of activists and organisations in America, especially in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and New York City, in the early 1970s. At that time, there was an amazing outpouring of art, culture, and activism that was trying to identify the idea of Asian American-ness, as well as to put Asian Americans at the forefront of the international social movements that were happening."

The activists addressed everything from the provision of healthcare services to providing arts education for young people, Wong adds. "They made posters, art and film, they believed in revolutionary politics, and they thought Asian Americans were at the forefront of the era of global revolution. There was really a diverse mix of organisations at this time."

Artefacts on show include copies of the influential Asian-American magazine Bridge, and photographs of demonstrators protesting against police brutality and racial discrimination outside New York's Supreme Court building in 1975. There's music by Fred Ho, a jazz musician who infused the form with ideas from Asia, as part of an aim to develop a revolutionary Asian arts movement.

There's also a collection of artworks from "Yellow Pearl" (a pun on the racially abusive term "yellow peril"), a project of the Basement Workshop. This arts and activist collective, founded in 1971, served as the locus of many of the groups in the Asian-American movement.

The late 1960s and 1970s were a time of international revolution, and images from Vietnam and elsewhere inspired Asian Americans, and provoked movements sympathetic to their causes, says Wong. It would be wrong to think of the movement as simply composed of social groups protesting local issues, as some were allied to the big political movements and ideologies of the times, he says. "Some of the posters in the Interference Archive's collection show the visual culture that people in the Asian-American movement would have seen coming out of Asia," says Wong.