Operating as a simultaneous online marketplace and exhibition, Mao’s Meme Company explores the creation and consumption of identity amidst artists of the Asian diaspora in North America who produce meme-like art. In the context of this exhibition, “memes” are defined as consumable and distributable art that pairs text with appropriated images. Often, memes offer satirical and humorous commentary that is used to discuss virtually any contemporary concern, but especially those related to identity. Mao’s Meme Company argues that in navigating the post-internet world where cultural value is determined by the content you share, constructing a consumable digital narrative that reflects one’s own cultural identity is of utmost importance. This is especially pertinent to diasporic artists, who already exist - both online and IRL - between traditional definers of identity. Mao’s Meme Company reclaims the internet and the meme as platforms for identity exploration related to diasporic artistic communities by way of a satirical online store. In a radical effort to critique likes, shares, and retweets as new determinants of cultural value, Mao’s Meme Company rethinks the meme as more than a repost, but as a comic marker of diasporic identity.



In line with art historian Alexandra Chang’s thinking, we defined diaspora as “a formation of communities of affinity through the practice of active linkage and connection including performative interaction and cultural production,” in order to think critically of our consumption of identities online.[1] Mao’s Meme Company argues that our defining identify through sharing content online places particular pressures on diaspora communities to bridge already-established gaps between cultural heritage and assimilation. We suggest that because traditional notions of identity are flattened through social media, one must share carefully. Mao’s Meme Company critically questions how meme consumption exploits identity as mass-produced cultural worth for an online audience.



Traditionally, memes accumulate greater cultural and economic value when their references become more obscure. We aim to obstruct current notions of meme aesthetics and relevance in relation to diasporic identity by looking to three artists who explore the qualifications identified in our definition of memes in their artistic practice. The three artists chosen either serve as precursors to or expand on contemporary memetic discourse. The diasporic art narrative told through Mao’s Meme Company begins in 1980s New York City with photographer Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990). Tseng used self-portraiture to create satirical photographs that commented on his identity as both Chinese and American. Mao’s Meme Company positions Tseng as one of the first to create distributable images that satirically explore identity constructions. Our second featured artist, Chinese-Canadian photographer Ken Lum (b. 1956), takes us to 1990s Vancouver, short after the advent of the modern Internet (then listed with capital “I”). Lum’s text-based works pair generic images with repeated narratives in a simple font, thus reflective of traditional meme aesthetics. Similar to tensions evoked by Tseng’s pairings of stereotypical American and Chinese iconography, Lum’s “double portraits” create an oscillating tension that forces viewers to create a narrative linking the text with the image. The third chosen artist is Kevin Yatsu (b. 1996), co-curator of the exhibition. Yatsu is a fourth-generation Japanese-America currently living and sharing memes online in Eugene, Oregon. Yatsu’s work, which functions as an ad on Mao’s Meme Company, exists as a musical cult cast with cultural tropes and characters popular in American society and online meme communities, thus expanding on the performative aspect of identity that is also evident in both Tseng and Lum’s works.  


Mao’s Meme Company pairs internet-based art scholarship with diasporic literature as our methodological foundations. Mao’s Meme Co. is modeled after online sites of critical aesthetic engagement such as The White Pube and the online exhibition Net Art Anthology, both of which explore open-ended questions of how to display and engage with art in the digital age. As evident through these references, the universality of digital platforms is important to consider in our unearthing visual and cultural issues of identity coded in memes. Mao’s Meme Company, noting that memes are an unexplored area of art historical research, argues that “[we] should not, for a moment, underestimate or neglect the important of the act of imaginative rediscovery which this conception of a rediscovered, essential identity entail.”[2]



Lastly, Mao’s Meme Company’s form as both exhibition and marketplace functions as an artwork in itself. Inspired by Kobena Mercer’s acknowledgement of his own positionality in his article “Looking for Trouble,” our intentional move to make Mao’s Meme Company an artwork, online shop, and research platform propels the scholarship on our website one step further.[3]

We hope that by forcing our audience to interact with the platform by shopping for t-shirts, clicking on ads, and scrolling through un-downloadable images, we will force those who participate to think critically about how our consumption and interaction with images on the internet, something we argue reflects your cultural identity, as represented through our assigned monetary values on the site. In turn, we hope that this forces us to rethink how we construct identity amidst identity not only as country of origin, but to look at diasporic art through a “multifocal circuit that examines the polycentric universe of space and time through which some works of art may travel as they enter the imaginative realm of great time.”[4]



This exhibition is intended to exist exclusively online alongside other online marketplaces in lieu of a formal gallery setting. We suggest that this mode of distribution heightens themes of consumption and identity today. Mao’s Meme Company is accessible to anyone who knows the password.

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[1] Alexandra Chang, “Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Arts Collectives from Godzilla, Godzookie, to the Barnstormers,” Beijing: Timezone 8 Limited (2008): 1.

[2] Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, “Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader,” (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), 224.

[3] See: Kobena Mercer, “Looking for Trouble,” “Transition” 52 (1991): 184-197; and Kobena Mercer, “Art History and the Dialogics of Diaspora,” “Small Axe 16, no 2 (2012): 213-227.
[4] Kobena Mercer, “Art History and the DIalogics of Diaspora,” 224.