Identity Trapped ‘Between the Sheets’ : Art: Susette S. Min’s multimedia project looks to break stereotype of Asian women as either servile and submissive or as studious bookworms.

“I wanted to discuss things that aren’t usually discussed among the women of the Korean-American community,” says Susette S. Min. “Things like sex, domestic violence and eating disorders.”

And discussing she is. Armed with a prestigious Rockefeller grant, Min, a relative newcomer to the art world, has organized an ambitious multimedia project bringing together 22 visual and video artists from throughout the United States as well as several dance and performance artists to do just that.

Min calls her project “Caught Between the Sheets”--a reference to stereotypes of Asian women as either servile and sexually submissive (caught between the bedsheets) or as studious bookworms (caught between sheets of notebook paper). The project includes an exhibition at the Los Angeles Photography Center through Aug. 16 and a two-night performance at Barnsdall Art Park’s Gallery Theatre that concludes tonight.

“The main objective was to show the multi-identity of the Korean-American woman,” Min said. “I wanted the work to show different aspects of her and that she’s not just one person. It’s like all the artists in the show--we’re very different women, but yet we’re all Korean-American women and we all have some of the same conflicts with tradition and (the ways of) our mothers and fathers.”

Included in the exhibition are works such as Ji Young Oh’s painting “I My Me Mine,” in which a distressed woman is distanced from her own body even as she glances down upon it; Sasha Yungju Lee’s “A Rose by Any Other Name,” in which Yi Dynasty painter Sin Yun-bok’s images of Korean women bathing are juxtaposed with Botticelli’s “Venus” and surrounded by a yellow background with terms such as hussy, cheesecake, broad, slut and babe, and Soo Jin Kim’s assimilation-themed installation “Distance,” which includes a video work, viewing benches covered with stereotypical Asian cookie fortunes and text dealing with a woman’s struggle to learn the English language and ways.

Particularly bold are San Francisco-based performance artist Selena Whang’s “Reproduction of the Sexual,” a series of text-and-image works that make such statements as “In Red White + Blue, there is no room for yellow,” and deal with subjects such as the birth of U.S. feminism and rape. Also by Whang is “Y Korean Girls Cut Up Their Faces,” a troubling photo-and-text work discussing sangkyopul and kokosul , surgical procedures often undergone by young Korean women to cut folds on their eyelids and raise the bridge of their nose in an attempt to appear more Caucasian.

Among the six videos shown on continuous rotation are Christine Chang’s “Displaced Identity,” in which a 30-year-old immigrant woman begins to lose her Korean language and culture long before she becomes comfortable in the American world, and Helen Lee’s “Sally’s Beauty Spot,” which deals with various cultural ideas of beauty.

“The work talks about a lot of things--(for instance) just showing the body is something you just don’t see with Asian art in general,” Min said. “But unfortunately, there are still things that I couldn’t touch upon in this show, and that’s the frustrating part, because there was just so much that needed to be said.”

Min, 24, whose arts background is limited to an internship at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and a double major in history and art history at UCLA, admitted that she was “surprised” to receive the $8,000 Rockefeller grant that propelled “Caught Between the Sheets,” but said the project was one that “really needed to be done” because of prior lack of attention on the subject.

Min also will use tonight’s performance to expand the idea of Korean-American women. Featured are various programs including Los Angeles dancer and choreographer Young-Ae Park, San Francisco-based comedian Margaret Cho and performance artist Whang.

The evening’s second half is a three-act play written and produced by Min (and directed by performance artist Arjuna). It deals with conflicts between a young Korean-American bride (who is marrying a non-Asian) and her traditional Korean mother who had an arranged marriage.

“It was really easy for me to write the play because I based it on personal experience with mother-daughter things,” Min said. “It’s hard for Korean-American women because we have a lot of generational conflicts with culture and traditions and family values. We can decide to keep our traditions, or we can discard certain traditions. But we face conflicts, because maybe our parents don’t want us to discard the ones we choose. . . . So often Korean-American women are caught in a historical stereotype that’s been accepted, and they just can’t get out of that.”

“Caught Between the Sheets” at the Los Angeles Photography Center, 412 S. Parkview St., (213) 383-7342, through Aug. 16. Closed Mondays.

“Caught Between the Sheets” at the Gallery Theatre, Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., (310) 478-6205., 8 tonight. $10.