curated by jen lau
august 2019

In the beginning of this year my grandmother passed away. Although she had lived in the United States since 1978, she had never learned to speak English fluently or drive a car and she was okay with it. She was the cultural matriarch of our family and helped raise us from birth. She was the reason why Mandarin was our first language, why pork stew is our favorite food, anD why we learned how to play mah-jong.

As the decades passed, she picked up different bits and pieces of American culture: a passion for recycling, Smarties candies, and watching her favorite show, Wheel of Fortune.

I was born and raised in the Midwest where I was one of two Asian American kids in my class. Throughout my life I have often found myself caught in between two conflicting cultural identities, zhongguoren or Chinese person and waiguoren or American person. (Ironically the word for foreigner is synonymous for American in Mandarin).

This is common among immigrants and first-generation Amercians but not something that is often represented in popular culture. I wanted to give my peers a space to voice their experiences while confronting the Model Minority Myth. Simultaneously challenging the idea of what it means to be American and the definition of American culture.

- Jen Lau, Curator

Artists:

Kat Liu

Joyce Jiao

Alice Mao  

Archangelo Crelencia

Yi Chun (Maggie) Cheng  

Danesh Kothari 

Angel AnQi Gu

Marqus Nguyen

Jen Lau