History omitted and erased are as significant and integral as recorded history. What we experience within and without exists regardless of texts on a page, a line in a ledger, in a book, in a banker’s box, in an archive, in a library, enclosure within enclosure within enclosure. The cracks, smears, and tears in art of the past become an integral part of the art itself. History lost its colonial legitimacy when deconstructed by the recognition that history doesn’t belong to the victors. Instead of being “gaslit”, I use gaslight to illuminate the unrecorded, the blanks, the erased, the forgotten. Art to re-enact; art to fill in the blanks; art to mirror our revisionist memories; pin the medals on the chests, give the names to the nameless, plant the tombstone for the buried. Legitimacy is what we say it is.
This art series was spurred by my discovery of anecdotal history in a small mining town in Nevada. When you drive on highway 95, through the desert, into Tonopah, you’ll see the Clown Motel, then its neighbor, the Old Tonopah Cemetery. Beyond the fenced enclosure of Tonopah’s luminaries past, is a mound of mining waste. Underneath the mound are the bodies of Chinese immigrants.
However, their lineage didn’t end there. Beyond the diaspora that is part of the immigrant experience, is the knowledge that we are all rooted from our loved ones and our lives branch beyond ourselves. There is universality in specificity. There are millions of unmarked graves of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women dotting our country’s landscape, land space. The following series is called “Transgressions,” a recordation of the psyche processing private and personal crimes committed within the context of political, ecological, and socio-economic systems.
This work is a visual dirge not just for the men buried beneath the waste. It’s for all bodies, disregarded once their utilitarian purposes have expired.
This series would not be possible without the discovery of Jamie Ford, who in search for his great grandfather’s resting place ended up by the side of Highway 95 at the foot of a pile of mining waste. His generosity and kindness sustained the creation of the series. This show would not have existed without the curation of Nancy Good and Mylene Lachance-Paquin, the firsts to give room and space for the narration for the forgotten. I appreciate the assistance from Jessie Sun, for translating all the materials for Transgression. And I have nothing but gratitude for all the wonderful people who make CAAC, Gallery 456 the important center for discourse and the exchange of ideas.
