Jennifer Ling Datchuk American, b. 1980
Hustlers, my neck, my back series, 2023
Porcelain
9 x 9 x 4 in
22.9 x 22.9 x 10.2 cm
22.9 x 22.9 x 10.2 cm
These porcelain baby forms are cast from an antique Chinese export ware ceramic pillow form – made to prop up the head to protect hairstyles during sleep. An uncomfortable form...
These porcelain baby forms are cast from an antique Chinese export ware ceramic pillow form – made to prop up the head to protect hairstyles during sleep. An uncomfortable form of labor to protect the façade of wealth and status. I remade them to carry the weight of Asian women’s labor, and they seem to have an expression of delight on their faces, while being in a table-top position, carrying things on their backs—a nod to how Asian women experience fetishization while also laboring and providing service, product, or resource. The objects they carry - peaches, oranges, blue-and-white porcelain vessels, peach pits, and sewing thimbles - represent longevity, luck, and beauty, and symbolize the labor they embody and the comfort and care they provide to others when they often go without.
Exhibitions
Bemis Center, Eat Bitterness May 20 –September 17, 2023, curator: Rachel AdamsLiterature
Jennifer Ling Datchuk Interviewed by Michelle Millar Fisher, Bomb Magazine, Sep 5, 2023 (illustrated)Trimble, Lynn. “An Artist Who Braids Cultures, from the Porcelain Trade to Beyoncé.” Southwest Contemporary, July 24, 2025. (illustrated)
