“There Are Many Ways to Hold Water
Without Being Called a Vase”

Antonius-Tín Bui is a Vietnamese American, nonbinary, performance and visual artist whose means of expression in this exhibition is the craft of Chinese paper cutting. This technique for making images dates back to a few centuries after paper was invented, and variations of it are practiced all over the world. But Bui’s pieces are extraordinary in their size and intricacy. The main piece in the front room of Monique Meloche Gallery, called The Work of Love Becomes Its Own Reasons, is 52 inches high by 112 inches long. It is an outstanding example of Bui’s technical expertise and virtuosity.

        But that virtuosity is not what makes this show so captivating. It is Bui’s exploration of the meaning behind the title of the exhibition, “There Are Many Ways to Hold Water Without Being Called a Vase,” a line taken from the poet Franny Choi’s poem Orientalism Part I. The show is divided into two rooms. The front room where The Work of Love Becomes Its Own Reasons hangs is devoted to familial scenes. This work shows two men on a couch in each other’s arms. The couch is patterned in a vine motif that partially overlaps the figures. The vine motif will play a significant role in the rest of the exhibition. The cushions on the couch have a variety of regular geometric patterns with similar patterns in the clothing of the figures. The figures appear content, if not happy.

        Flanking The Work of Love… on the right is Like the Ocean, Having Been the Ocean Long Before We Arrived, Each Wave Newborn and Buried at Once; Like Us, Standing Breathless at The Edge, Astonished by Our Own Lungs. (Bui uses extremely long titles that are often mini poems.) Like the Ocean… is an image of two women from two generations backed by delicate geometric screenwork and surrounded by encroaching vines. On the left is Not Everything Floats. I Am Trying to Learn Which Parts of Me to Let Sink, possibly a self-portrait, is a seven-and-a-half-foot high piece. An androgynous figure is crouched at the bottom, again enveloped by vines that also encircle the books and framed pictures in the background. In the upper right-hand corner is incised “Cutting off ur dick just cuz u feel like it.” Melancholy pervades this image. A Silence Settles That Isn’t So Silent, another “family” portrait with two figures, hangs on the opposite wall. The background contains a selection of vases in niches, and a repeated traditional Chinese paper cutting pattern embellishes the garment of the seated figure. Vines, again, surround the figures. In these images, the thing that holds water but is not a vase seems to be the combination of family bonds and traditions. Symbolized by the vines that encroach on the subjects of each of these images, the familial ties suggested in Bui’s works may not be as comforting as they seem.

        We have become accustomed to seeing vegetative backgrounds since the emergence of Kehinde Wiley as a star on the contemporary art scene. In Bui’s works vines are an integral part of the meaning of the work and are not a decorative motif. They imply the choking presence of familial and cultural bonds. They are like kudzu, threatening to engulf everything.

        The second room of the gallery contains works of an entirely different nature. They address the issue of sexual identification. Noticeably, in most of the pieces, the vines are gone and replaced by broken vase fragments. This new motif alludes to a possible inverse of the show’s title: “when a vase is broken, its water is set free”—suggesting freedom from the constraints of tradition, freedom from the censure of society, freedom to express one’s true self. The main wall of this room contains three works colored in a deep Chinese red. In the middle is Mending in a Daybreak That Casts Every Shadows Except Your Own., an almost seven-foot by three-foot work. It depicts young men masturbating while surrounded by fragments of broken vases and vegetative motifs that echo the vines of previous works. But the parts are not connected into a vine. In fact, they seem more like creatures than leaves, producing a subtly creepy feeling. The piece suggests that sexual self-satisfaction may be ultimately unsatisfying. On either side of this large work are smaller, roughly round pieces, There’s Nothing Left Here for You, and In Between Deaths. They depict broken vases that have the vines as their surface motifs. But what is especially noteworthy in all three is that their backgrounds are no longer a lattice of clean geometric forms. Rather, they are irregularly interconnected tendrils that taper off at the edges like a piece of frayed fabric. Paradoxically, the ensemble is strikingly beautiful despite the unsettling subject matter.

        To the left of these three pieces hangs There Are Many Ways to Hold Water Without Being Called a Vase. To Drink All the History Until It Is Your Only Song, the titular piece of the show. Painted a deep navy and measuring approximately seven by three-and-a-half feet, There Are Many Ways… shows an individual of ambiguous gender in multiple, overlapping renderings, as if a sketch or study. They are surrounded by broken vase fragments, with the vine motifs appearing only on pieces of the vases and possibly as tattoos on the skin of the subject. It is the only large piece in this room that does not have overtly sexual content. Of the other three large works, one, Body Called Itself Master. Body Named Itself Free. Body Bought Its Own Freedom. Body Sold Itself to the Top. Body Broken Glass All by Itself. Body Spills All the Light. Body All the Light. Body Only Dark When It Wants to Be, depicts an orgy in an overtly explicit way. But interestingly, the figures are intertwined with the vines and fragments of regular grids can be seen in the background. It is not surprising that the figures are entangled, when one realizes that the title refers to the life of sex workers. This work, too, is in that dark navy blue. The remaining two pieces in this space each seem to show couples who are sexually engaged. But with body fragments appearing here and there, it is not certain that there are only two individuals in each composition. Painted a dark reddish brown (a blend of the navy and the red?), these pieces, as suggested by their lengthy titles, seem to contrast the pleasure of anonymous sex versus the rewards of a loving relationship. One is called Silent & Unkissed – That’s How I Wanted You to Suffer, Too, Boy Who Wouldn’t Look at Me. Seeing You Run So Beautifully on the Track That Afternoon, I Wanted You to Suffocate, Breath-Starved from All the Miles You’d Run Away from Me., the other Because I Stopped Apologizing into Visibility. Because This Body Is My Last Address. Because This Mess I Made I Made with Love. Because Only Music Rhymes with Music. Because I Made a Promise. Again, in these two pieces, the vines are relegated to the role of tattoos.

        In a way, this exhibition is a chronicle of Bui’s life and experiences—not strictly a biography, but a record of his social and cultural environment. It also indirectly addresses the stereotype of the feminized, submissive south Asian male. In the European-American LGBTQ+ community, the Asian male is most often thought of as the submissive participant in sexual encounters, the “bottom,” especially in that community’s pornography. This is a stereotype that must be difficult for an Asian nonbinary male. Feminine, submissive, and nonbinary are NOT the same, and that distinction is made clear in the subtext of this exhibition’s images, especially those in the second room dealing directly with sexuality.

        One is initially drawn to this exhibition by the technical virtuosity of Bui’s works and by their compositional beauty. But the meat of this exhibition is both in the content of the works and how the exhibition is organized to create a compelling narrative that reveals that content. One cannot leave the space without being informed about the cultural complexity of LGBTQ+ Asian men. This is done in a way that tells the truth, both good and bad—not in a propagandist manner. Their nuanced and thoughtful approach is what makes Bui’s imagery art.

Michel Ségard is the Editor in Chief of the New Art Examiner and a former adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also the author of numerous exhibition catalog essays.

The exhibition is thoroughly documented on the Monique Meloche website, including installation views and a picture of each piece in the show along with detail views.