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Talk Story: An American Family Curator’s Statement Talk Story: An American Family continues the autobiographical diary of an Oakland based Chinese American family from its early years to the present day. In a series of monoprints making their debut at the Chinese Historical Society of America, mixed media and installation artist Flo Oy Wong introduces her textile creations in a new format, mixing a blend of her iconic rice sack weavings with photographic renderings on paper. Her late father, Gee Seow Hong, figures prominently in this tale beginning with recollections of a near tragic incident by an assailant when she was an infant - Wong’s father was targeted for revenge following a family dispute. The history of this celebrated family comes to life in her more familiar rice sack assemblages with book art panoramas of family life and is further contextualized by her Oakland Chinatown renderings. It is these latter works which initially brought the artist to my attention when they were on view at the Oakland Museum in 1990. Wong has taken needle and thread, tools bearing connotations more closely associated with women laboring for a pittance in America’s sweatshop industry, and transformed familiar cultural artifacts into tangible spoken words. We can hear her mother’s voice as she chases the would be murderer through the streets of Oakland Chinatown. The ambience of a bustling neighborhood in the early 1940s wafts with the hot plates served up at the Great China Restaurant on Webster Street. And what became of the Gee/Wong family? In reminiscent poems, journal entries and commentaries, the now grown children of Gee Seow Hong and Gee Suey Ting - Li Keng, Lai Wah, Nellie, William and Flo – come together at Chinese Historical Society of America in celebration of their family’s journey of resilience and survival. It is a sweet and poignant odyssey of a unique and creative Chinese American family with echoes of a bygone era. Lenore Chinn
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