ILLUMINATING TIME • Portland Chinatown Museum Artists-In-Residency Exhibition ILLUMINATING TIME SHU-JU WANG SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚 ALEX CHIU
Sam Roxas-Chua, detail, A Reason to Gather Around Paper, 2022 (pages 54-55).
ILLUMINATING TIME Portland Chinatown Museum Artists-In-Residency Exhibition SHU-JU WANG SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚 ALEX CHIU
4 ILLUMINATING TIME We received generous funding from the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights grant to start a yearly artist residency program at the Portland Chinatown Museum. Creative Heights grants support the creation and presentation of new and innovative works and provide opportunities for artists and cultural institutions to stretch their creative capacities and try out new ideas. Designed by Bryan Potter Design, Portland, Oregon Printed by Brown Printing, Portland, Oregon All images © the artists and photographer Jeffrey Lee. Copyright © 2023 by Portland Chinatown Museum All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Portland Chinatown Museum.
CONTENTS 5 CONTENTS Preface 6 From the Executive Director 8 Curator’s Statement 12 SHU-JU WANG 18 SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚 40 ALEX CHIU 60 Appendix A 96 Appendix B 101
MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to collect, preserve and share the stories, oral histories and artifacts of Portland’s Chinatown as a catalyst for exploring and interpreting the history of past, present and future immigrant experiences. We envision a more equitable and just society where all people value the experiences and contributions of the diverse peoples and cultures that shape the evolving American narrative. EQUITY STATEMENT The Portland Chinatown Museum embraces and practices the values of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all of our decision-making processes. We believe that disparities based on characteristics of race, gender, gender orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, class, geographic location, disability, faith, and sexual orientation are systemic and structural problems deeply embedded within our society and its institutions. PCM plays a part in dismantling these biases by presenting a vision of the region’s past and present through the perspectives of the Asian Americans who have lived here. Our work is driven and informed by the desire to highlight the experiences of people who have been left out of the conventional narrative and mainstream culture of the region. LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Portland Chinatown Museum acknowledges and honors the Indigenous peoples and their descendants of the Lower Columbia and Willamette River region whose lands the City of Portland and our Museum currently occupy. These include Willamette, Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlamet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook tribes and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and the many other Chinookan peoples who established communities along the lower Columbia whose descendants are today members of the Grande Ronde, Warm Springs and Siletz Confederated Tribes of Oregon.
PREFACE 7 ABOUT PORTLAND CHINATOWN MUSEUM The Portland Chinatown Museum (PCM) is Oregon’s first museum about Chinese American history, art, and culture. Opened to the public in December 2018 in an historic building at NW Third Avenue and Davis Street, the Museum honors Portland Chinatown’s past, celebrates its present, and is helping to create its future. The permanent exhibition gallery features a 2,400 square foot exhibition, Beyond the Gate: A Tale of Portland’s Historic Chinatowns. Two front galleries serve as a venue for the work of contemporary Asian American artists in all media, as a site for storytelling about the immigrant experience, and for exhibitions, lectures, performances, and other public programs. The Portland Chinatown Museum is operated by the Portland Chinatown History Foundation, founded in 2014 by a group of Chinese American elders with deep roots in Portland’s Chinatown. PORTLAND CHINATOWN MUSEUM’S ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM The artists-in-residence program at the Portland Chinatown Museum (PCM) provides Asian American artists who live and work in Oregon or Washington the opportunity to collaborate, create and exhibit new art that reflects upon the past, present and future of Portland’s Chinatowns and Oregon’s Asian American communities. Artists in residence have the opportunity to collaborate with others and interact with the history of Portland’s Chinatowns through the museum’s permanent exhibition, oral history and photograph collections, community elders and neighborhood partners. The Portland Chinatown Museum’s artists-in-residence program aims to: • Provide a space for artists to collaborate and to create innovative new art that contributes to the collective history of the Chinese and Asian American experience in the Pacific Northwest. • Connect contemporary artists with the rich history of Portland Chinatown art and culture. • Provide a leading role for artists in community efforts to preserve, revitalize and re-imagine Portland Chinatown as an important cultural and educational Oregon site. • Provide greater representation, equity and opportunities for Oregon and Washington Asian American artists. • Help build bridges and a larger sense of community between historically marginalized cultural groups.
8 ILLUMINATING TIME FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: A Portrait of the Artist Residency; Index as Playground, Recollection as Memorial, Subjectivity as Community Practice, and Exhibition as Medium This foreword offers art historical perspectives on what is gained when artists illuminate time. Ideas from the Whole Picture by Alice Procter 1 and the Portrait’s Dispersal by Ernst van Alphen2 provide theoretical frameworks for viewing the inaugural artist residency exhibition Illuminating Time at the Portland Chinatown Museum. Procter outlines the myriad ways museums have been and, still are today, tools of white supremacy and colonization. She asks how museum practices might sever ties with the evils of our past. Van Alphen looks at how portraits have served these oppressive narratives. He endeavors to show how contemporary portraiture transforms notions of subjectivity and representation. The following short essay will draw parallels between these texts and the artistic practice of our resident artists Shu-Ju Wang, Sam Roxas-Chu and Alex Chiu, and our curator Horatio Hung-Yan Law. 1 Procter, Alice. The Whole Picture: the Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums & Why We Need to Talk About It. London: Cassell, 2020. 2 Van Alphen, E. J., and G. Mosquera. The portrait's dispersal: Concepts of representation and subjectivity in contemporary portraiture. La Fabrica, 2011. Artists addressing Portland Chinatown Museum community at Illuminating Time opening event on December 1, 2022.
9 Index as Playground: Shu-Ju Wang The installation Postcards from Tanner Creek (2022), by Shu-Ju Wang, traces the ecological and cultural history of the Chinese Americans who cultivated gardens along its banks. Her immersive installation consists of projected images from its present-day surroundings; imagined correspondence from the creek itself; a playful marble-run sculpture installation that winds and waterfalls eventually into a traditional woven basket; and seedlings for visitors to take as mementos from their sensorial plunge. Wang explains her work: I have been learning about regional ecology and researching agricultural and gardening practices, urban development, immigration, labor policies and our changing farm/food cultures, all connected through a creek that is no longer visible but is still flowing beneath the surface…. I set out to learn about Tanner Creek, the Chinese gardens, the history of immigration, agriculture and urban growth, but I have also learned that there is much work ahead to make our home more sustainable and equitable. The symbolic inventory she creates bears witness to the existence of Chinese Americans who might otherwise be unseen in local histories. Van Alphen would say that the representational portrait is replaced by “contiguity as the new mode of portraiture.” The contemporary symbols of the creek provide a historical understanding of the Chinese Americans who cultivated its fertile land as gardens. Thus, museum visitors can connect the present to a portrait of the past in new ways. Procter uses the word playground to describe installations that play with the ideas of monuments to past places and ‘people with inherited power’ from colonization and white supremacy. The subjects of Shu-Ju Wang’s work, the creek and the gardeners, show us often obscured parts of everyday life. Procter would say this can bring a person or a place “from the past into contrast with the contemporary implications of our shared history.” Recollection as Memorial: Sam Roxas-Chua 姚 Van Alphen posits one contemporary painter’s idea of portraits as bringing somebody back or recalling them. Sam Roxas-Chua evokes people from distant memories through meditative contemplation of objects he encountered on-site during his archeological journeys with the artist residency. These items are cataloged in the photography, video, spoken-word, found-object and calligraphic elements of Roxas-Chua’s site-specific works. One Long Arm is all of these things: calligraphy, found-object, and a portrait of a mother and a people recalled by the process of his installation. Roxas-Chua explains:
10 ILLUMINATING TIME The piece is an 8-ft Chinese character for ‘person’ made up of dyed shirtsleeves to symbolize and reference the work and contribution of Chinese labor workers throughout Oregon’s history. The fabric was dyed using inks I use for my personal calligraphy... with added excavated charcoal from John Day, Oregon, wood soot from historical building sites, flue soot from a Chinese laundry in The Dalles, Oregon, and burned plant material from mining sites and various places.... I’ve added a special brocade outline on the top piece of the character. It is cut from my mother’s old dress. I use it to symbolize all the mothers who said goodbye to their sons and daughters who left for America. He speaks about how hearing birds at the John Day archeological site prompted him to imagine the Chinese American residents who could have listened to those same bird songs long ago. Roxas-Chua’s work creates what Procter calls “landscapes of memory which do not necessarily entail grief but are meant to facilitate empathy.” She says that some of the most profound memorials, like Roxas-Chua’s site-specific works, focus on people’s lives with legacies that monumental narratives could erase. Subjectivity as Community Practice: Alex Chiu Linda Nochlin said the portrait shows us “the meeting of two subjectivities.”3 Contemporary theory explores how portraits are never just the replication of the sitter but speak to the ideals of a time and a place and the artist depicting the subject. Alex Chiu’s portraiture project and research exemplify this idea of a portrait. Four Oceans, One Family acts as a framework for the show and a reference to Chiu’s beloved murals throughout Portland. He has said of his project: The mural depicts one side of the Portland Chinatown Gate from a low angle perspective. The Chinese phrase, read from right to left, translates to ‘four oceans, one family.’ As a nonnative Portlander, this phrase means a lot to me.... This phrase, ‘four oceans, one family’ gives me the hope of belonging. It communicates to me that people of Chinese descent have a place in Portland. It is a phrase of comfort to people in search of a new home. The museum residency itself is my deliberate attempt to connect with the Chinese American community in Portland. My focus was to have conversations with individuals of Chinese descent to learn about their history and hear their stories. The goal for me was to build relationships with people who share my ethnic background in hopes of learning more about myself. I learned a lot in the process. 3 Van Alphen references this seminal text: Nochlin, Linda. “Some Women Realists,” Arts Magazine (May, 1979): 29.
11 The portrait, Betty Jean Lee, demonstrates Chiu’s accomplishment and beautifully captures her spirit as someone who created belonging in Portland and was a pillar of our community. She received a copy of Chiu’s zine Four Oceans, One Family the week before she passed away and was honored to find belonging in Chiu’s project and be thought of in this way. This was a statement about the power of portraiture as community practice. Exhibition as Medium: Horatio Law It has been said that understanding exhibition-as-medium is central to knowing if the art within or the exhibition itself will make history. The artist residency conceived of by Law and supported by the generosity of Creative Heights, Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project, Roberta Wong, Joanna Sun, Kapi’olani Lee, Jennifer Fang, Linda Rondinelli, Jackie Peterson Loomis, and the museum’s board and staff is an example of both. The exhibition is vital to the canon of art as it highlights how artists can rectify the histories created by foremost mainstream academic authorities. The artists did so by interacting with the primary documents of archives, archeology and oral histories to show a community-based record. The works are also crucial to exhibition history because the concept for the installation went beyond the tradition for artist-curator shows, as we’ve seen at the Museum of Modern Art, wherein they select works from a collection. Law, as the artist-curator, challenged the artists to go anywhere and do anything within their desired scope. It was a daunting proposal, but it created a polyvocal exhibition. The artists crossed traditional museum boundaries and found beauty in new places. Sam Roxas-Chua made participatory art at archeological digs. Alex Chiu painted a mural on the museum walls of Sam Roxas-Chua’s mother during installation. Shu-Ju Wang invited collaboration with the artist Sara Siestreem, connecting further with ecological and indigenous histories. Most importantly, people saw themselves because the art and the exhibition formed a portrait of the Portland Chinatown community. — Anna Truxes, Executive Director
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13 Why Community Matters As an immigrant child, I came to the U.S. with my parents and settled in New York City where they could find work easily within the Chinese American community and integrate themselves quickly among fellow countrymen who came from similar regions in China. We joined the Chinese Episcopal Church, the equivalent of the Anglican Church that we’d attended in Hong Kong and sought out the New York City branch of the Law Family Association. These were the usual steps that newly arrived immigrants took to find a place where their families could prosper and feel they belonged. Fast forward to 1994 when I first arrived in Portland as an artist-in-residence at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts (OSAC). Like many new MFAs, I was searching for a place where I could strive as an artist. I felt like an immigrant all over again. The residency at OSAC was just like the close-knit Chinese American community in New York City — I found acceptance and a ready-made artist community to belong to. Yet the Chinese part of my identity longed for a deeper connection to this place, this city, and this region of the country. As I researched into the history of Chinese presence in the state of Oregon, I found records of Chinese American and Chinese communities not only in the Portland metropolitan area, but also in Astoria, Eastern, and Southern Oregon, and from Curator Horatio Law (3rd from left) with PCM resident artists (l-r) Sam Roxas-Chua, Alex Chiu and Shu-Ju Wang on December 1, 2022
14 ILLUMINATING TIME times as early as Oregon’s formation of statehood. Even though I am not a direct descendant of those immigrants, knowledge of their presence/existence gave me a sense of kinship and belonging, as well as a yearning to understand these communities that no longer exist – who were they, how they lived, why they left or why they stayed. Much of my subsequent work stem from this inquiry and my experience as an immigrant. Eventually, I became involved with the Portland Chinatown History Foundation (PCHF) and have been serving as an art advisor to the board of PCHF’s Portland Chinatown Museum (PCM) since its beginning in 2018. PCM’s role as a social and professional hub for local contemporary artists of Asian descent has always been important, providing community, alliance, and a “home” where these artists can feel they belong and flourish when mainstream institutions continue to overlook them. These factors contribute to the reasons I envisioned an artist residency at PCM. The program is also an innovative way to reach new generations of Asian American audiences and explore the role of art in a history and culture institution. Its unique emphasis on combining art and history can be a powerful tool in helping younger or 2nd/3rd/etc. generations of Asian Americans find resonance in stories of immigration, discrimination, and exclusion, as well as recognize the resilience of these older Asian American communities in the hardships they faced. It is my hope this knowledge can help the younger generations combat fatigue, fragility, and build resilience in dealing with current hostile social conditions amid anti-Asian hate and anti-immigration politics. The PCM residency program is structured to provide artists with a unique opportunity for place-based and community-based exploration, using the museum and the neighborhood as a living laboratory and studio for art and research. Our resident artists can spend time exploring PCM’s permanent collection of artifacts and oral histories, and talk to our guest historian, Jennifer Fang, Ph.D. Through PCM’s partnerships and networks, resident artists can also reach out to elders and other individuals in the Chinese American community, as well as other Old Town/Chinatown community organizations, to support their research. Their residencies culminate in the year-end exhibition at PCM, providing an opportunity for the community to peer into each artist’s sensibility and working process, to support their research, and to celebrate their achievements.
15 Illuminating Time: Our Resident Artists’ Year-End Exhibition Illuminating Time highlights the work of the individual resident artists on the history of the Portland Chinatown community, as well as past and present Oregon communities of Chinese descent. For these artists, the residency became the embarkment point of not just a historical or archeological excavation of Chinese migrant history in the Pacific Northwest, but also an internal inquiry into the shaping of their identities and emotional landscape as Asian Americans. Their emotional links to stories, places, and personalities became the bases of the artworks they created for Illuminating Time. These works revealed the harmonics, reverberations, and resonance resulting from their residency. The exhibition illustrates how, through their works, these artists forged connection and resonance to the history and life of Chinese American individuals and communities, illuminating their time in the past and present, and building foundations for creating history for the future. 2022 Artists-in-Residence: Our Inaugural Class Shu-Ju Wang came to the U.S. to attend high school. I have known Shu-Ju for a long time as a painter and book artist and have long admired her ability to apply her diverse life experience to her work, including her history as an immigrant and background in technology and science before she became an artist. In recent years, Shu-Ju turned her attention to the subject of ecology and our relation to the environment as a culture. She was intrigued when I mentioned to her the history of Chinese farms around Tanner Creek in the Goose Hollow neighborhood of Portland, and that these Chinese farmers had supplied fresh produce for most of Portland at the beginning of the 1900s. These historical facts dovetailed with her interest in ecology and became the point of entry for her residency work at the museum. Shu-Ju dove deep into the history of the Chinese farm community around Tanner Spring/Creek in the Goose Hollows neighborhood. She compressed and subsumed her findings into a multisensory and fun-filled marble-run installation project. The marble-run sculptural installation creates a physical and metaphoric facsimile of Tanner Spring and Creek’s geography. It personifies the flow of the spring and the impact of Chinese labor on the ecology of Portland. Her installation addresses the audience through “personal postcards” informed by her research on Tanner Spring’s history and supplemented with homegrown seedlings similar to the crops being grown in the Chinese farms. Her marble-run simulates the
16 ILLUMINATING TIME geographic and physical flow of the spring. The sound created by the marbles vividly reminds us of the timbre of the creek when it was running wild before the building of culverts that eventually buried the spring entirely below ground. Shu-Ju’s project reminds us of the complicated history of human interaction with our environment and reveals the intricate connection of the Chinese/Chinese-American community to the development of the city of Portland. Sam Roxas-Chua is a widely published poet and visual artist based in Eugene, Oregon. His Chinese-Filipino American background provides intriguing perspectives for the residency program. I met Sam in a poetry reading, and right away I was fascinated by his unusual application of multiple media with his reading. Listening to Sam’s poetry, I was always reminded of the human potential of seeing things that were not seen, hearing things that were not heard, and touching things that were not felt. I invited Sam to use the residency to examine the historical objects and artifacts from the museum’s rich collection. Sam joined actual archeological digs and excavations in Oregon through the Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project run by Chelsea Rose, a frequent partner of the Portland Chinatown Museum. At these sites, he surmised and re-imagined the experience of individuals in historic Chinese communities in the Pacific Northwest. His encounters with historic sites and artifacts provided the opportunity for a type of emotional/archeological excavation that captures the essence of time and place. Sam’s artistic practice uses somatic experiencing and asemic calligraphy to interact with the Chinese relics/artifacts, historical documents, clothing, and objects, to reveal joy and trauma that transcends generations. His works from the residency brought out the poetic in simple everyday objects, imbuing them with emotional and tactile history of individual humans from past Chinese American communities. They also capture the ephemerals of lives lived and give them indelible forms that evoke the senses. In his hand, place-based sound recordings overcome the distance of time; dust and soot from these historical sites embody important vestiges of the Chinese American experience.
17 Alex Chiu is a Chinese American painter and muralist living in Portland, Oregon. When I met Alex a few years ago, he was already known for creating public murals that explored ideas of family, community, Asian American identity, and Portland history. In our initial meeting, I suggested he could use the residency as a springboard to research for the murals he was already commissioned to do for the PCM and to delve deeper into his Chinese American identity and his relationship with the Chinese American community in Portland. During his residency, the ‘public muralist’ Alex explored the community’s private and personal, by conducting intimate interviews with individuals in the tight knit but diverse Chinese American community of Portland. The resulting portraits he created show the diversity and uniqueness of the interviewees, capturing their personalities and individual lives. By gifting these portraits back to his interview subjects, Alex created new ways in connecting with his interviewees and developed ethical ways for a fair exchange of ideas, history, and information. His process turned his residency into a social practice project. Along the way, he also rediscovered his own connection to his immigrant family, artistic lineage, and the complex and nuanced profile of his Chinese American identity. — Horatio Hung-Yan Law
Shu-Ju Wang
20 ILLUMINATING TIME When I was invited to submit an artist residency proposal at the Portland Chinatown Museum, I knew I was going to research Tanner Creek; I also knew how I was going to organize my application-related (and residency-related, if accepted) files. On my desktop, I have a folder called “a study of home” containing various projects I’ve undertaken to learn more about my home — the ecology of our region and the histories of the peoples who live here. My residency research definitely belongs there. In the months since, I have been learning about regional ecology and researching agricultural and gardening practices, urban development, immigration and labor policies, and our changing farm/ food cultures, all connected through a creek that is no longer visible but is still flowing beneath the surface. Tanner Creek originated in the Tualatin Mountains and flowed through Portland to join the Willamette through Couch Lake. The creek flooded seasonally and the growing city wanted more land for development. In the last 3 decades of the 19th century, the city diverted the creek north of Burnside Street through underground culverts to control flooding and to create infill for housing and streets. Sometime after the first culverts were built under Burnside (around 1873), the creek’s riparian zone south of Burnside (now Goose Hollow) became a vegetable garden cultivated by Chinese sojourners. The garden area waxed and waned for the next 30+ years, reaching 20+ acres at its height, before disappearing in 1910. Its disappearance POSTCARDS FROM TANNER CREEK
SHU-J U WANG 21 was a combination of development, racist policies, changing farm/food culture, and a destructive fire. I spent the 2022 growing season sowing and raising a few vegetables that the Chinese gardeners might have grown. I found no primary sources documenting what they grew, so I relied on stories on what their customers purchased — radishes, cabbages, carrots, and celeries. Based on my first hand experience battling pests and contending with unpredictable weather, it is labor-intensive, and hard work does not guarantee success. Even today, farm labor is difficult, something not necessarily reflected in our food prices. I set out to learn about Tanner Creek, the Chinese gardens, the history of immigration, agriculture, and urban growth, but I have also learned that there is much work ahead to make our home more sustainable and equitable. I want to share some of the knowledge I gained through my installation, Postcards From Tanner Creek Marble Run. I hope you find it both fun and informative. — Shu-Ju Wang Installation view of Shu-Ju Wang’s works from Illuminating Time exhibition QR CODE: Postcards From Tanner Creek video/audio Note: All descriptions and writings in this chapter are by the artist.
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SHU-J U WANG 2 3 Postcards From Tanner Creek 2022, a marble run representing Tanner Creek, comprised of wood, metal, plants, foam, polypropylene, marbles, wall text, with additional elements detailed on following pages.
24 ILLUMINATING TIME Mailbox mounted on a post, serves as the entry point for the marbles (marbles are contained in a bucket hanging directly below the mailbox on the post); marbles drop out of the mailbox and onto the Switchback. Switchback mounted on the wall, representing the meandering path of Tanner Creek as it traveled downhill through Tualatin Mountains. Service bell which rings as marbles drop onto it after traversing the Switchback above. The Chinese vegetable gardeners also picked up and delivered laundry as they sold their produce door to door. Although they would not have used a bell for this service, I wanted to include a sound that is often associated with laundry service.
SHU-J U WANG 2 5 The 90 degrees turn. When Tanner Creek comes into Portland from the Tualatin Mountains, it makes a 90 degrees turn to the east, so the marble run also makes a 90 degrees turn, but in the opposite direction due to the room configuration. The washboard. Another representation of the laundry pickup/delivery service the Chinese vegetable gardeners provided. The Goose Hollow “U.” Tanner Creek makes another 90 degrees turn and forms a “U” as it goes through Goose Hollow, so the marble run also makes another 90 degrees turn and forms a U, but again, in the wrong directions due to the configuration of the room.
26 ILLUMINATING TIME The seedlings. In honor of the Tanner Creek Chinese vegetable gardeners, I am raising and giving away seedling as part of the installation. Depending on season/weather, it will be a rotating selection of cover crop, PNW native plants, and vegetables. While gardens were in the creek’s “U” of Goose Hollow, the seedlings are situated slightly away from the “U” to be more visible and accessible.
SHU-J U WANG 27 Outlet to basin (basket). Tanner Creek flowed out to a marsh (Couch Lake) before joining the Willamette River. Project-specific, PCM-commissioned basket by Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), woven with native plants that grew along the course of Tanner Creek: Red Cedar Bark (Siuslaw Forest), Sedge (Umpue River), Sweet Grass (Wilmuth), Juncus (Wilmuth).
28 ILLUMINATING TIME Four wall panels of “postcards” written from Tanner Creek’s point of view addressing Portland’s history in relation to the creek and the Chinese vegetable gardens.
SHU-J U WANG 2 9 Postcards From Tanner Creek, c. 1911 Dear Portland, I’m afraid I bring you sad news. The Chinese gardeners who built the culvert that redirected my water, but stayed to cultivate my land, are gone. Although the city didn’t understand the great benefits I brought to the land, the Chinese gardeners did. Over these last 4 decades, they raised vegetables that supplied fresh produce to the neighborhood families and expanded the gardens to 21 acres. They lived in huts and shanties right along my banks, in the hollow itself. Their homes and their gardens sometimes suffered when my water spilled over the banks, but they persisted and succeeded. I thought of them as “my gardeners” and the gardens “my gardens,” it is through my existence that they could succeed. It seemed that they also understood this – that when I overflowed my banks, I was also replenishing the soil for their next crop, and they and their vegetables will benefit. My gardens were lush and beautiful, and it’s not just my saying so. People wrote about these gardens and made picture postcards, said it was a sight to behold in the middle of a growing city; and A picture postcard of the Tanner Creek Chinese Vegetable Gardens, looking west to the Tualatin Mountains. The road on the left going up the hill is now Jefferson Street, and off the right edge of the photograph would have been the site of Multnomah Athletic Club before their expansion into the vegetable gardens area. The Chinese gardeners lived in huts and shanties built of repurposed materials right in the hollow. Photo courtesy of Norm Gholston. how wonderful that fresh vegetables could so easily be delivered straight to the backdoors to the ladies or maids of the house. Portland has continued to grow, so very quickly. Many more people created many more problems. Problems like garbage and sewer, and the thirst for land for development was never ending. Now, my gardens have come to an end, and my gardeners and I vanish from sight. Tanner Creek ps. I am still around and flowing. You only need to listen for me through manhole covers along my course. Maybe some day I will see daylight again, let’s hope we will meet then.
3 0 ILLUMINATING TIME Four wall panels of artist’s notes that discuss U.S. policies, Portland urban development, and the advent of industrial agriculture that brought on the changes to the creek and the Chinese vegetable gardens.
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3 4 ILLUMINATING TIME Asleep in the Chamber of Mirrors) Moonlight Becomes Frost Becomes Apple Pie Becomes Moon Cake Becomes Moonlight From Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie Series 2012, polyptych, gouache & acrylic on paper mounted on panel, 24 in x 24 in
SHU-J U WANG 35 By Air, By Land, or By Sea From Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie Series 2012, diptych, gouache & acrylic on paper mounted on panel, 12 in x 24 in Snack Attack! From Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie Series 2012, polyptych, gouache & acrylic on paper mounted on panel, 24 in x 24 in
3 6 ILLUMINATING TIME Ripples I 2016, watercolor, silkscreen, embroidery on paper, 21 1 /2 in x 19 in
SHU-J U WANG 3 7 A Study of Home 2021, silkscreen, pressure print, edition of 13, 21 1 /2 in x 12 1 /2 in (unframed paper size)
3 8 ILLUMINATING TIME Right as Rain 2016, watercolor, Print Gocco, paper, buckram, wood, embroidery thread, jewelry finding, 48in x 19in x 19in
SHU-J U WANG 39 Castor and Sapient 2021, silkscreen, etching, pressure print, and collage, 5 1 /8 in x 8 3 /4 in x 1 in closed; 9 ft long fully opened
4 0 ILLUMINATING TIME Three Oranges and Blue Mountain Moons, 2022. Three (3) 18in x 12in brocade scrolls with lasercut Asemic.
Sam Roxas-Chua 姚
42 ILLUMINATING TIME Gold Lightning and Lullaby Scripts, 2022. Multi-media installation; bottom platform: 24in x 50in; scroll: 12ft high x 11in wide.
SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚 43 EVERYTHING IS MEMORY Process creates memory • Memory stitches stories into the gray fabric our minds • The mind’s main function is to know • To know is to make sense • To know means I am a part of you • To know means past is present and present is future • To know is to inquire and to have courage to sit alone in a room and feel the earth push back under your feet and re-shape aspects of ourselves that have been torn • There has been a tearing in me for a long time but there also years of mending • This residency is a part of the mending years • I immersed myself in braver parts of me • I maneuvered this silent pandemic by reaching out to communities outside of my own • They have taught me so much • They’ve made me brave and let me ask questions in the way my tongue wanted • My voice / my English / my fourth language • They taught me how listen to materials before I touch their surfaces • And when I touch I make things alive • To touch a wall is to touch a face • I can now sit with questions longer than a poem can • Everything is memory is what I heard in the script • it’s what I heard in the poems • — Sam Roxas-Chua 姚 Note: All descriptions and writings in this chapter by artist Sam Roxas-Chua.
4 4 ILLUMINATING TIME ARTIST STATEMENT I have an appetite for listening to stars exhaust gasses across the cosmos. I have a hunger for the sound of penmanship run its tongue down the chest of flat paper. I have a longing to trace the veins of histories gone wrong and palpate a message in Morse Code to say: It’s ok to correct yourself. It’s ok lick your wounds. MY ASEMIC WRITING PROCESS Asemic is a type of open-form writing that has no intentional meaning or prescribed language. There have been many writers throughout the world and each one has their own technique. My approach to this open-form of writing is through poetry and somatic feeling (relating to the body, especially from the mind). As a transracial/transcultural adopted person, I find that I cannot claim a “first tongue.” I grew up learning and speaking Hokkien, Mandarin, Tagalog, and English. Writing in asemic form gives me access to imagery only a meld of languages can. To me, it is the visual representation of the poetry I write. When I’m writing a poem, sometimes I cannot carry its weight. Because of this, I dip my calligraphy brush into ink, place it onto paper, and think about the poem I am working on. I find this process invites my whole body to participate in the inquiry through the open movement of brush, wrist, and memory. Then somewhere between the repeated brushstrokes, an image appears that ends up in the lines of the poem. I then record myself out loud as a way to hear how the poem wants to be read. All of the asemic pieces shared in this exhibit were created during and after site visits to John Day, The Dalles, and Astoria, Oregon. One of the main pieces in the exhibit,
SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚 45 EVERYTHING IS MEMORY, is a two-part installation called Gold Lightning and Lullaby Scripts. I feel this installation is the heart of my experience with the Portland Chinatown Museum residency. Through this work I was able to gather, widen, and deepen my inquiry into finding a place in this community and be a part of Oregon’s history. The scroll hanging from the ceiling was inspired by a dream where I saw gold lightning illuminate the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon. In the dream, the lightning led me to a container filled with a metallic liquid broth. The gold ink script is accompanied by smaller scripts which are written using liquid ingredients my late mother Betty used in her cooking (soy sauce, rice wine, red vinegar, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and other spices). Her image is on the wall above you, painted by my fellow artist-in-residence, Alex Chiu. The bottom part of the installation is a collection of asemic calligraphy inspired by works gathered from a live installation during the Public Archaeology Day at Kam Wah Chung in John Day. Further inspiration came from other works I created in the field. The ink used includes excavated charcoal from heritage sites, wood remnants and flue soot from the Wing Hong Hai Co. building in The Dalles, plant material from Chinese mining camps, and flowers from Astoria. It is important to me that I present my calligraphy work as “broken” pieces rather than their completed form, so they may be seen as artifacts. Because of this, the scroll and books used in this installation will be torn into pieces at the end of the exhibit so they stay in conversation with the temporary nature of things. Everything will be returned to the earth after this show. For a fuller personal experience, I invite you to scan the QR CODES with your mobile device to hear audio recordings of the poems and other sounds.
4 6 ILLUMINATING TIME The Weeping Script, 2022. Asemic calligraphy on handmade paper; wood veneer top and bottom border, 34in x 33in. Opposite page: Stone Satellites Over An Excavation Site, 2022. Photograph of calligraphy section from a scroll installation at John Day, Oregon, with rattan backing; archaeology core team members were asked to tear the scroll with me; 38in x 33in. The Weeping Script / Please Be Guided Accordingly
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4 8 ILLUMINATING TIME ONE LONG ARM Chinese character for person or “人” made up of dyed shirt sleeves to symbolize and reference the work and contribution of Chinese labor workers throughout Oregon’s history. The fabrics were dyed using inks I use for my personal calligraphy work. I added excavated charcoal from John Day, Oregon, wood soot from historical building sites, flue soot from a Chinese laundry in The Dalles, Oregon, and burned plant material from mining sites, and various places. I’ve added a special brocade outline on the top piece of the character. It is cut from my mother’s old dress. I use it to symbolize all the mothers who said goodbye to their sons and daughters who left for America. The character 人 is a beautiful image of someone living and walking in the world. One Long Arm and artist’s shadow.
SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚 49 Coordinates With a line from H. Alexander Dedicated to Chelsea Rose, Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project, The Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology, Oregon State Parks, Malheur National Forest, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Portland Chinatown Museum, and the Oregon Historical Society We have to walk these hills in the rain or under a hot canopy of blue over bright forecasts. We do it for the butterfly that lands on fingers to ask which way is home. We must continue to walk these hills to touch bone or tin or fragments so old it holds back like a hand of a friend who once brought us a cup of cool river water. Throats thirst like a river. When I walk these hills. I carry a photograph of my mother. It’s folded inside my right shirt pocket. It guides me the way her soft hands used to. It takes me to places where pools dry under trees—a found shelter for a shoelace, a button, or pieces from tools made from other broken things. I admire salvaged geometries. When I walk these hills, I am found. When I walk these hills, I’m taught to see the perimeters of a home or daytime shelters where rock piles shaped into half-moons protect fire from wind and wind from flipping pages on my field journal where I write the location of my body. We are strengthened by the backbones of history. My teachers are archaeologists. They teach me to sift through the day, the way the sun reflects its face on a broken lip of a cup or a piece of a bird’s breast bone or the galaxies inside of stone. Yes, let it be beautiful when I sing the last song.
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