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Flo Oy Wong - Territories of Insight
Territories of Insight
Flo Oy Wong
August 23- October 8
Gorecki Gallery & Gallery Lounge
Reception: Thursday, September 16, 5:00- 7:00 pm.
Artist Talk 5:30 pm
Related Events:
Sept 16 at 7:30pm Recital Hall BAC - Flo Oy Wong presents the Keynote talk: Territories of Insight: Asian American Contemporary Artists for the Asian Studies Program fall kickoff event.
Friday October 1, 2010 at 5:30pm - Art Galleries BAC. - Dr. Melanie Herzog presents a public talk entitled Flo Oy Wong: Visual Storyteller.
Through evocative and multilayered installations in a range of media - rice sacks, beads, sequins, embroidery thread, photographs, rice, and the material objects of people's lives, along with fragments of text - Flo Oy Wong, an American woman artist of Chinese descent, gives voice to individual, familial, and communal stories of immigration, relocation, family secrets, and unlikely friendships.
Born in Oakland, California in 1938, Flo Oy Wong grew up in Oakland's Chinatown, the sixth of seven children. Her first major body of work, her autobiographical Oakland Chinatown series, honors her immediate and extended family's work as restaurateurs at the Great China Restaurant in Oakland from the 1940s into the 1960s and illuminates, from an insider's perspective, a particular moment in the history of Chinese immigration and resettlement in the United States. Subsequent mixed media installations honor the experiences of her family, other Chinese immigrants, and working people of various ethnicities as they highlight the struggles and challenges endured by Asian immigrants as a result of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law and U.S. immigration policies enacted at Angel Island from 1910 until 1940, decry the injustice of the forced internment of Japanese Americans in 1942, and visually manifest the blending of Chinese American and African American cultures in the U.S. south during the era of segregation. Through evocative, multilayered imagery in a range of media - rice sacks, beads, sequins, embroidery thread, photographs, rice, and the material objects of people's lives, along with fragments of text, Wong's art gives voice to individual and collective stories of immigration, relocation, family secrets, and unlikely friendships. These are not only personal, but are also part of a broader narrative of United States social history that includes the manifold contributions of working people of various ancestries to the rich fabric of this country.
Dr. Melanie Herzog
Professor of Art History, Edgewood College, Madison, Wisconsin
This exhibit is co-sponsored by: CSB/SJU Intercultural Center, Art Department, Asian Studies Department, Saint Ben's Senate, International Student Program Office, and the Asia Club