Shhh: It’s a Secret!
Flomenhaft Gallery, New York
December 8, 2005 – January 19, 2006

On December 8, 2005, I opened in a solo exhibition entitled Shhh: It’s a Secret at the Flomenhaft Gallery in New York. The exhibition was curated by Eleanor Flomenhaft, gallery owner. She selected exhibition pieces from a variety of past work, among them the Baby Jack Rice Story, a visual narrative about my husband’s childhood in Augusta, Georgia during segregation, Bitter Melon Rice Blues: Elegy for America, a joss paper work about anti-Asian violence, made in usa: Angel Island Shhh, my installation about the exploration of identity secrets of Chinese immigrants detained and interrogated in the United States, and Kindred Spirit, a faux scroll series about Wen Ho Lee, former nuclear scientist who was arrested by the U. S. government for mishandling nuclear data. I also showed several old and new pieces more personal in nature. The older works were Flo’s Sack and Les’ Sack from my ongoing embellished rice sack series about my siblings and me and three suitcase pieces from the work entitled My Mother’s Baggage: Paper Sister/Paper Wife/Paper Aunt, my mother’s immigration story. I started Dinner Table 2, an homage to my parents and siblings, in 2004 at Art Omi, a New York residency. Year earlier in 1996, I began Through the Looking Glass and I finished this autobiographical rice sack piece in 2005 to display in New York.

The reception on the night of December 5th was exciting. Eric Jiaju Lee, composer of non-traditional erhu pieces, played with another musician as family members, relatives, friends, and art patrons mingled throughout the gallery. African American artist Faith Ringgold came with friends. I greeted the guests and spoke about the individual pieces.
It was a time to celebrate my first New York solo show at the age of 67.

Talk Story: An American Family
Chinese Historical Society of America
San Francisco, California
January 10, 2005 – April 9, 2006

On January 10, 2006 my solo exhibition entitled Talk Story: An American Family, curated by Lenore Chinn, opened at the Chinese Historical Society of America in the Frank Yick Gallery. I mounted this show of drawings, prints, embellished rice sacks, and artist books to talk about my father’s (Gee Seow Hong) influence in my art-making, exhibiting a combination of older and newer work. The Oakland Chinatown pencil drawings, graphic renderings that I made from the 1980s to the early 1990s, show aspects of my family’s life in Oakland Chinatown approximately fifty years ago. When I did these drawings I wanted to eradicate stereotypical images of Asians in America; I wanted to show my family as ordinary working class people. The ongoing series of embellished rice sacks which I started in 1992 represent the 5 surviving siblings in our family; the 6 monoprints narrate my mother’s lament when my father was shot by a relative in a business dispute sixty-five years ago. The 3 artist books created in 2005 are a further development of my early drawings. Because I wanted the Chinese community to have language access to Talk Story I had the supporting text and signage translated into Chinese. I wrote two original creative non-fiction stories for the show, one about my sister, Li Keng Wong, who had to keep my mother’s immigration secret and one about my other sister, Lai Webster, who made it possible for our family to leave Angel Island through her sassy retort to the Angel Island interrogator.

Lenore Chinn curated and designed the exhibit, using oxblood to represent my China-born siblings and imperial yellow to represent the American-born siblings. These became the exhibition colors. In China, during an October 2005 an art and cultural exchange that I led, we saw the imperial yellow in an exquisite exhibit. Back home in the U. S. I decided to co-opt the imperial yellow to symbolize ordinary people like my family and me. Both Lenore and I wrote essays in the accompanying exhibition monograph. At the entrance of the Frank Yick Gallery there was a basket of lee see with each lee see stuffed with rice. I invited viewers to take a lee see home along with a monograph. When I give rice away I feed people conceptually.

I am indebted to many people who made the show happen. I thank my husband, Ed, for his technical support, Jamie Kong, my grandniece who served as my studio assistant for helping make much of the art, my daughter-in-law, Liu Dan, for the Chinese translations, my siblings - Li Keng Wong, Lai Webster, Nellie Wong, and William Wong - for participating on the family panel, Irene Poon Andersen for inviting me to show at the Chinese Historical Society of America and Marisa Louie for assisting Lenore and me as we planned, developed, and implemented the exhibit. To Pam Peniston, Rudy Lemcke, and Lenore Chinn I offer bouquets of gratitude. I am grateful to the major funder, Grants for the Arts, and other organizations and individuals who sponsored my show. The exhibit was produced in association with the Asian American Women Artists Association.

Whispers of the Past
January 30 – March 24, 2007
40 Acres Gallery
Sacramento, CA

On February 10, 2007 I opened in Whispers of the Past at the 40 Acres Gallery in the mostly African-American Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, CA.  My exhibition, a multifaceted retrospective with an accompanying sixty four page hard bound catalog, was a component of the Sacramento Philharmonic’s Gold Mountain Project, which honored the contributions of Chinese to California through music and art.  Jane Hill, former director of the Sacramento Philharmonic, spearheaded the project.  Kim Curry Evans, director and curator of the 40 Acres Gallery, directed the exhibition, envisioned the catalog, and orchestrated, with the assistance of Wendi Everett, my outreach to Sacramento High School students and my artist residency at PS7, the elementary school of the St. Hope Academy.

The 4 new pieces I made specifically for Whispers of the Past were stories of Frank Fat, Dr. Edna Mae Fong, Bill King, and Ming Nee Mah, residents of Sacramento, Locke, and Walnut Grove respectively.  I incorporated photos from the subjects’ family photo albums and real objects from their lives in the scrim installations.  The transforming narratives of their challenging lives colored with exclusion and racism were told through the installation and catalog narratives.

On the stormy evening of February 10, 2007 five hundred people attended the exhibition opening of Whispers of the Past.  The show included the calligraphic ideograms for Gold Mountaincreated by PS7 students.  Art patrons also viewed the student photographs of Locke taken during a field trip with parents.  The festivities brought together diverse people to celebrate the artistic and historical presence of Chinese in California.

I am grateful for the assistance that I received from family members, friends, community members, project advisors, storytellers, studio assistants, and gallery volunteers.  I am grateful to individual donors and organizational funders and I am deeply appreciative of Melanie Herzog’s insightful catalog essay.

To Jane Hill, Kim Curry Evans, Wendi Everett, Kevin Johnson, his mother known as Mother Rose, I say ooh deah, Toisanese for thank you.  From them I know that art builds community.