Chinatowns, Distorted

About the Project

I received funding to extend my visual arts spring capstone project from a reinterpretation of Asian American Theater into a more comprehensive art book project about Chinatown and motifs of “China” in America. The awarded funding my allocation expenses in New York and Boston. Prior to my trip in August, I used June and July to research theatrical forms of Asian representation. I read “A History of Asian American Theater” by Esther Kim Lee and “Asian American Drama: 9 Plays From the Multiethnic Landscape” edited by Brian K. Nelson. I studied different forms to represent Asian American disillusionment to inform my understanding of “performance.” Then, in August, I visited NYU’s A/P/A archives to research Asian American artist perspectives from the Godzilla art collective. Additionally, I took photographs of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn Chinatown. I also took photographs of Boston’s Chinatown and visited culturally significant Chinatown organizations such as the Chinatown division of Boston’s library as well as the Pao Arts Center. The photographs will be distorted digitally and eventually printed out in a booklet form. Research and identifying motifs through photography’s visual emphasis helped deepen my thoughts on the politicization of Asian American culture and for Chinese American specifically. Receiving the Benenson Award was fundamental to shaping the project by supporting this trip, which now directly informs the thematic elements of the project. “Chinatowns, Distorted” will now prioritize the commodification and commercialization of identity, and how objectification directly relates to how Chinese Americans continue to “perform” for the sake of financial survival. The current timeline of my project is being pushed back, so I am still in the process of “Chinatowns, Distorted.” When I finalize the written portion of the project and edit the remainder of my Chinatown photographs, I will seek out publishers who focus on hybrid, interdisciplinary, and experimental work for distribution.