Artist Statement:

As queer Chinese American scholars, organizers, and artists, we curated this exhibition centering narratives of home, community, and intergenerational and ancestral resistance. Born, raised, and rooted in New York City, we continue to witness the rapid gentrification of our neighborhoods. We recognize and uplift the work of tenants, community organizers, elders, and small business owners who imagine and fight for different futures for our cities.

HOMEWARD BOUND uses photographs, oral histories, and multimedia archives to highlight stories of migration, displacement, and everyday resilience in Chinatowns around the world. This exhibit 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. Our work centers the radical intimacies of strangers and the possibilities in narrating diasporic movement, dispossession, and belonging. 

Our work draws from five years of ethnographic research and oral history interviews with the Chinese diaspora that spans nine countries and fourteen cities, including: New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, Lima, Havana, Johannesburg, Taishan, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, and Sydney. As Chinatowns around the world continue to change and the diaspora uprooted, it is imperative that histories also at risk of being lost are preserved for future generations, and everyday resistance uplifted.

Location: Pearl River Mart, 391 Broadway, New York City 
Dates: November 10, 2018 through February 2, 2019