Pao Arts Center is proud to host Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns.
Walk through our 3D exhibit and enjoy an audio tour from Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s podcast as part of the Homeward Bound virtual experience. Curated by queer Chinese American scholars, organizers, and artists Mei Lum, Diane Wong, and Huiying B. Chan, it centers narratives of home, community, and intergenerational resistance. The exhibition contains multimedia content from written text, video, audio, along with the artworks.
The exhibition draws from four years of ethnographic research and oral history interviews with the Chinese diaspora that spans 9 countries and 13 cities.
The installation uses photographs, oral histories, and multimedia archives to highlight stories of migration, displacement, and everyday resilience in Chinatowns around the world. This exhibition is the first of its kind to honor, preserve, and build on the history and present day issues of Chinatowns through community-led and curated narratives from residents globally.
This exhibition opened in-person February 22, 2020.
About the Artists
Huiying B. Chan is a creative writer, cultural organizer, and scholar born and raised in New York City. Their body of work centers diaspora, collective healing, love, and intergenerational and ancestral resistance and resilience. Huiying received the Knafel Fellowship to travel solo to Chinatowns in eight countries around the world documenting global stories of migration and resilience across the diaspora.
Diane Wong is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-Newark. As a first-generation Chinese American born and raised in Flushing, Queens in New York City, her research is intimately tied to the Asian diaspora and urban immigrant experience.
Mei Lum is the 5th generation owner of her family’s over century-old porcelain ware business and the oldest operating store in NYC's Chinatown, Wing on Wo & Co. (W.O.W.). In light of Chinatown's rapid cultural displacement, Mei established community initiative, the W.O.W. Project in 2016 out of a desire to amplify community voices and stories through art, culture, and activism.
This exhibition is brought to Pao Arts Center with generous support from Mass Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, finding, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of Mass Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
