Kitchen Table Stories Exhibition 

I am honored to have been awarded the 2021-2022 Curatorial Fellowship at the Evanston Art Center.  The Kitchen Table Stories exhibition will be a collection of work created by local Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander artists.  For more information visit Evanston Art Center's website.

Curator’s Statement

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Traditional cultural and healing practices are creative embodiments of a people, and are often expressed through the arts.  They have been passed down from generations and are integral to daily life.  Few customs and traditions throughout the world have been untouched by colonialism and imperialism, and many have been misappropriated or eradicated.  Decolonizing the arts involves reclaiming, renewing and reaffirming these practices.  It necessitates critically examining the structures that are in place to oppress and erase people and communities.  It is decentering the dominant white narrative and shifting focus to spaces, voices, and stories that represent people who are racialized and marginalized due to their social identities.  

The Kitchen Table Stories exhibition is a step towards reimagining the spaces that have historically excluded Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander American voices.  Despite the current movement towards the decolonization of museums and galleries, artists of color remain underrepresented across the US.  The attempts to be more inclusive are often exercises in fetishization, exoticization and tokenization of black and brown artists.  Who are the cultural gatekeepers of these spaces?  Who decides which stories are told?  Who tells them?  Who contextualizes them?  Who witnesses them?

The Kitchen Table Stories exhibition is a celebration of stories shared by local artists who identify as Asian, South Asian and Pacific Islander.   Artists were asked to share the stories that have been passed down to them from ancestors through family and friends, and create work that reflects their own lived experiences.  The result is an exploration of the intersections of immigration, citizenship, race, culture, social identity, multigenerational relationships, and family history.  In the spirit of stories that are shared at the “kitchen table,” the guest is invited to participate by engaging in discourse that considers the importance of telling our own stories and the power of the arts in that process.  The audience is asked to reflect on universal themes such as language, food, home, family, heroes and belonging through the lens of their Asian, South Asian and Pacific Islander neighbors in a space that centers hospitality as an art form that draws on cultural wisdom, lineal healing, and collective care.

Placemaking Project

Did You Know?

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Over 10% of Evanston's residents identify as ASPA, and that percentage isn't accurate.  Due to the limitations of boxes on census and city surveys, the term "Asian American" does not resonate with many who identify as ASPA.  South Asians, for example, seldom identify with the term because the general understanding is that Asian American refers to East Asians.  Filipinx, and other communities whose countries were colonized by the Spanish, sometimes identify as Latinx.  Further, in Evanston, there are many mixed families, especially White-ASPA families, with family members who might identify as "mixed race."

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Despite the fact that ASPA's have lived in Evanston for generations, and there is a solid and growing number of ASPA's in Evanston, historical data, community stories, and artifacts are nowhere to be found.  The lack of documentation of a community is a function of white supremacy.  It is a systemic erasure of a people.  The perpetual foreigner stereotype is one that has been applied to ASPA's in the U.S.  Regardless of whether they were born in or the US or your family has been in the US for multiple generations you are not American.  This certainly rings true if it is supported by a lack of documentation that a community ever existed.

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“By not showing up in American history, by not hearing about Asian Americans

in schools, that contributes to that sense of foreignness.”

- Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn, Teacher-Educator

  Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice initiative

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In 2021, the TEAACH Act was passed in the state of Illinois, mandating that Asian American history be taught in all IL K-12 public schools.  Although this is a significant step towards ensuring that ASPA people and stories are brought to light, we have to ensure that the ASPA experience in the U.S. is not reduced to a monolithic experience and limited to facts and dates.  We can start by ensuring that students who are learning in our D65 and D202 have access to ASPA people and stories in their own community.  ASPA students should be able to read, see and hear about people whose stories reflect their own, and non ASPA students should be able to find ways to make personal connections to the ASPA experience in their own community.  How can we teach Asian American history without knowing our own ASPA history here in our city?

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The Kitchen Table Stories Project is partnering with the Evanston History Center on a project called "Placemaking."  The goal is to establish an accessible archive of the ASPA community in Evanston.  We are currently researching historical documents and artifacts, and gathering oral histories to include in the archive.  The goal is to unearth these stories that have been hidden for so long, and to establish a timeline for the ASPA community in Evanston.

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TEAACH

What is TEAACH?

With its historic passage in April 2021, the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act amended Illinois School Code, ensuring that every public elementary and high school student in Illinois learns about the contributions of Asian Americans to the economic, cultural, social, and political development of the United States.

Beginning with the 2022-23 school year, every public elementary school and high school shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction studying the events of Asian American history, including the history of Asian Americans in Illinois and the Midwest, as well as the contributions of Asian Americans toward advancing civil rights from the 19th century onward.

Ensuring that Asian American history is taught in our schools lays a foundation for cross-cultural education for all students in Illinois and advances racial equity.

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(From Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago)

TEAACH Programming and Professional Development

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Kitchen Table Stories Project will be hosting a series of TEAACH Professional Development Workshops in summer 2022 and throughout the 2022-2023 school year. Through Kids Create Change, we will also be offering art-based programs for students K-8 during the 2022-2023 school year.

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More info coming soon!

TEAACH Resources

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Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago

Illinois State Board of Education

Movement Hub

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Resources