CHINATOWN OF THE SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS
This body of work explores and unpacks a moment that has stayed with me: an art historian in a well-funded documentary described the Chinese laborers who built the Transcontinental Railroad. She noted that they worked the most grueling section of the line, blasting through the Sierra Nevada mountains with little more than powder and chemicals, were paid the least, worked the longest hours, and were buried in unmarked graves, with ledgers recording ten bodies under a single name. And yet she concluded, almost cheerfully, that “they had a banquet of fish every night… they had tinned fish, and they were happy.”
It was unnerving to hear such brutal realities followed by a dismissal so small and simple. The presence of tinned fish does not soften their suffering, nor does it absolve the conditions they endured. My drawings critique 150+ years of harmful rhetoric directed at Chinese Americans. I use the image of the tinned fish with a satirical approach- using their form both as a memorial and an entry point to re-embody the Chinese laborers who have been rendered faceless in historical narratives.
I also summon Menshen, traditional Chinese Guardian Gods who protect homes from evil spirits. In the isolation of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, these men had no homes to shield them from the violence and hostility surrounding them. By calling the Menshen into these drawings, I create a cultural home in a foreign land, a form of protection that history denied.
This work stands as both a memorial and a reckoning. It insists that history can be rewritten, re-seen, and remembered with the dignity that was always owed.
2024- current
