2022 Big Read
An Exhibition of Artwork in
Response to Interior Chinatown
by Contemporary Artists
Chinatown Chronicles
At Eastern Art Gallery between January 18 and March 09, 2023 and on-line infinitely.
Chinatown Chronicles takes its inspiration from the novel Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. The book sets the dissonance between the American Dream and the dystopian experiences of immigrants within the iconic architecture of a Chinatown SRO, with its poverty and close quarters, and the equally iconic “International Golden Palace” restaurant, with its familiar exploited and undocumented labor force. Yu constantly reminds us that our Chinatowns are microcosms of their respective cities. The perils common to immigrant communities – historical trauma, displacement, gentrification, and commercialization of traditional culture – are the focus of Chinatown Chronicles. The exhibition reveals the tensions between belonging and estrangement endemic in immigrant communities, through paintings, sculptures, and documentary films grounded in exemplary storytelling and archival research.
“Racism was rampant. At the time of the quake, the immoral Chinatown presented by anti-Chinese forces-the one filled with gambling, prostitution, opium dens, and cheap labor competition-needed to be replaced by a better face, and fast, since the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had increasingly threatened the community with forcible removal. The opening of the earth, at five twelve A.M. on April 18, 1906, became the moment for reinvention. Soon afterward, the specifics of Chinatown’s new construction were determined by Chinese merchants Look Tin Eli and Tong Bong, who hired the architect-engineer team of T. Patterson Ross and A. W. Burgren to build the Sing Fat Co. building and the Sing Chong Co. Chinese bazaar.” (Page 22)
— Bonnie Tsui, American Chinatown: a people’s history of five neighborhoods
