There is an unsettling duality endemic the Asian diasporic experience in the Western world, where our presence is often cast as undesirably invasive while the product of our cultures, largely stripped of the context of its origins, inspires collective fervor in art and design that perpetuates across time. Asian export porcelain is a microcosmic example of this duality: not only did the ceramics adorn Western interiors throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, but they also featured heavily in defining the art and aesthetics of the period, as seen in work by Raphaelle Peale, John Singer Sargent, and countless others. At the same time that the popularity of Asian export porcelain was exploding, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and the immigration and rights of Asian Americans continued to be heavily restricted well into the next century.

LONG TIME NO SEE is a series of still life photography- and motion-based installations that delve into the complexities of the diasporic experience in America: presence/absence, integration/alienation, trauma/healing. The project mines the Asian export porcelain collection at the Museums at Washington & Lee, drawing pieces from before the first major waves of Asian immigration to the U.S. in the 1800s through the early 20th century. In the project, I directly intervene in the ongoing biographies of these export ceramics—themselves also members of the diaspora—and create layered conversations with archival materials, personal experiences, art and cultural histories, and non-native species in the natural world around southwestern Virginia, where the ceramics now reside.

The series consists of 15 still life tableaus, anchored by artist-curated Asian export ceramics from the collection. Each tableau as a whole was captured photographically with the ceramics. Then, the ceramics were hand-cut out from each photographic print, leaving voids where they once were. The final installation couples the altered, incomplete prints and the physical ceramics to re-form each tableau in three dimensional space. The end result is a physical metaphor for presence and absence, and challenges the viewer to actively confront the (ir)recoverability of wholeness in the face of history.

Much of the diasporic experience involves grappling with the continued amputation of the context of our origins, histories, and cultural practices when we are perceived as cultural “others” in American society. In weaving together historical and contemporary Asian American experiences, this project celebrates a transfer of narrative agency and power back to diasporic voices.