Project China/Chinatown
Mary Oestereicher Hamill
Location:
Chinatown Manhattan
Project Description:
The Project will return to the corner of Bayard and MulberryStreets in Chinatown where I will purchase fruit from the Chinese vendor and distribute it to immigrants. Each piece of fruit will bear a tiny sticker that shows a Beijing resident projected onto this Chinatown fruitstand; each piece of fruit will be wrapped in the Mandarin text of the Migrant Manifesto.
This work, built over time in layers, derives from two phases. First I loaned my cameras to residents in Beijing’s crowded ancient alleyways for them to take pictures of their lives on the streets; their photographs led to a festive exhibition in the Yan Yue Culture Center there in 2008. Phase Two addressed the immigrants on the streets of New York City’s Chinatown, where images of the old homeland rose up in the context of the new as I projected documentary video footage from the Beijing phase onto a range of meaningful surfaces. Next this collaborative art from China cast for further participation in the United States became an installation at the Danforth Museum in Framingham MA; museumgoers peeped through holes in a rice paper scrim to see layered still images from Chinatown come to life in their Beijing moving form (“regardregard” 2009). It was also presented at the Boston Cyberarts Festival 2009. See www.maryhamill.com and www.vimeo.com/20801528
Back to D18 Documentation