Senior Art Show 2018

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The New Wave

Redefining Asian-American Identity

May 2018

A note from the artist:

Living in the United States, a complicated dilemma presents itself when it comes to nationality and origin. Often referred to as “the great melting pot,” the U.S. is painted as a country made up of immigrants from all around the world who have been “melted” together and remolded under a new nationality: American. Despite this assimilation into the country, many of these people identify as hyphenated Americans: Asian-American, African-American, etc.. In my experience growing up as Chinese-American, I used to feel that while this differentiation clarified a sense of origin for myself and others, the specification also separated my ethnic heritage from my “American” self. It seemed to me as if I was split into two very different and distant halves: one, Chinese (the way I looked, the food I ate, the language my parents spoke to me) and the other, American (the clothes I wore, the music I listened to, the language I spoke back to my parents). But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that I’m not more Chinese than I am American, or vice versa, and it’s slowly becoming clearer and clearer to me that these two parts of myself do not exist on separate planes; on the contrary, they are very much intertwined and have been morphing for the past eighteen years into a new definition of the term Chinese-American that is unique to me and the experiences that I’ve had.

In this show, I wanted to work large so as to immerse the viewer in my artwork, hopefully also immersing them in my personal experiences being American. I encourage people to walk in between the large sheets of black paper so that they may get a fuller experience with the work. With “Bare Bones” and the zoetrope, “The Flow of Energy,” I hoped to convey the shifting nature of my identity, in regard to my nationality and origin, as I continue to develop and redefine what it means for me to be Chinese-American. On the other hand, with the photo series of my grandparents, “Generations,” I wanted to draw attention to the fact that I do not have the whole nature of my identity figured out, nor will I ever; they live distinct lives that are in many ways not part of mine.