Public Art

A public art project reflecting the collective identity & cultural heritage of the Asian immigrant community

Exhibition | Installation | Project Context | Inspiration & Collaboration | Archive | Press

The Red String is a public art project created by Lily Honglei Art Studio and supported by More Art, NYSCA, and NYFA. The project aims at strengthening the cultural connection between the Asian immigrant community and the broader society of New York, highlighting their cultural heritage, and bringing healing to the community afflicted by the pandemic and its subsequent anti-Asian sentiment.

EXHIBITION LOCATIONS

Margaret I. Carman Green – Weeping Beech Park (on the historic Green Trial) in Queens, NY from September 29th, 2023, through February 28, 2024.

Columbus Park in Chinatown, NYC, September 30, 2022 – January 6, 2023

Bowne Playground in Flushing Chinatown, NY, September 30, 2022 – January 6, 2023

INSTALLATION

The project installation consists of physical and digital components (F1) reflecting Chinese American collective identity, cultural heritages, and immigrant experiences. Physical elements include a series of large banners with distinct patterns of Chinese knots, also called Asian red strings, symbolizing Unity & Love (F2). The banners will be displayed on the fences in public parks, near the tables and benches where visitors gather daily. 

Digital components include mobile phone augmented reality (AR) and short animations inspired by East Asian folktales and traditional opera performances. Scanning AR codes, visitors in the parks can watch interactive animations superimposed on the banners, the segments from Lily & Honglei’s art videos, including The Butterfly Lovers, The Peony Pavilion, The Milkyway, Shadow Play, The Sunken Garden, and the large-scale oil painting series The Stereotype: Lives of the Invisibles. By reinterpreting Chinese folktales and traditional operas, the videos visualize Asian immigrants’ spiritual struggles with a hyper-commercial environment, psychological disconnection and isolation, and painful family separations.

The first installation of The Red String: Windows to the Soul took place at Maple Playground, Flushing.

PROJECTCONTEXT

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, the AAPI community has fallen victim to elevated racial bias and violent physical attacks in New York City and nationwide. Living in isolation and fear, many Asian Americans and immigrants have been seeking solace by congregating with peers in neighborhood parks where they play cards, mahjong, or have a chat. The Chinatown public parks, such as Bowne Playground in Queens and Columbus Park in Manhattan, are spaces where Asian immigrant residents try to build networks and find support for each other. We choose to launch The Red String project in these public spaces to generate more cultural dialogues and communications between the Asian enclaves and the broader American society, as well as bring art and cultural products that often evade these underserved immigrant communities. 

The area has the largest Chinese population in the City, as well as the largest Korean, Taiwanese, Thai and Bosnian-Herzegovinian populations (including residents born both in the United States and abroad).

Office of the New York State Comptroller

Flushing, Community District (CD) 7 is home to the largest number of Chinese immigrants in the City (70,000), more than double the number in Manhattan’s Chinatown (32,000).

Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs

As Chinese Americans and residents of Flushing Chinatown ourselves, we feel deeply for the community devastated by the pandemic economically and emotionally. The current anti-Asian sentiment, unfortunately, resembles the troubled history of American Chinatowns in the late 19th century, an era tainted by unspeakable violence and hatred toward Asian immigrants. This context sets the undertone of our current art practice: we intend to draw attention to Chinatown as a symbol of cultural identity, deepen the discussion on American social fabric, and bring healing to the Chinatown community through our work.

Lily & Honglei

INSPIRATION & COLLABORATION

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Cultural Heritage, as a symbol of collective identities, can contribute to uniting and thus strengthening cultural groups and communities.

CORNELIUS HOLTORF

East Asian cultural heritage, such as the folk-art form of Chinese knots (F6) and the traditional opera performance of Kunqu (F7), has inspired The Red String. The project integrating emerging technology of AR with cultural traditions demonstrates that, as practice artists, Lily and Honglei believe preserving and transforming cultural heritage have critical importance in forming identity and creating a sense of belonging for immigrant communities.

The shared passion for Kunqu opera has resulted in a new collaboration: a live performance of The Peony Pavilion by the Kunqu Society of New York is taking place during the Opening event (TBA) of The Red String public art installation.

Chinese Kunqu Opera live performance – by Kunqu Society of New York

During the project’s Opening event, the Kunqu Society of New York is presenting a live performance featuring an excerpt from The Peony Pavilion, the celebrated classic Chinese opera written by Tang Xianzu in 1598. At the Flushing public park, The Red String installation and Kunqu performance are visually and spiritually responding to each other. The Peony Pavilion has inspired Lily Honglei to create a series of paintings and animated shorts that audiences may experience through the AR components. For Lily and Honglei, highlighting cultural traditions such as Kunqu opera is not only for sharing the beauty of ancient Chinese culture but also for addressing critical issues such as immigrant identity, values, and community.

TRANSFORMING CULTURAL HERITAGE THROUGH CONTEMPORARY ART

Within the framework of the AR installation, some media art components (F4, F5) of The Red String project directly reflect influence from Kunqu performance, The Peony Pavilion. There is a striking contrast between the main characters in Kunqu costumes and the backdrop of western metropolitan landscapes – the external reality almost every immigrant or diaspora faces. 

The video Sunken Garden (F6) visualizes an imagined spring garden in which all creatures celebrate life by living in harmony with each other. The soundtrack is an excerpt of The Peony Pavilion – Zao Luo Pao （皂羅袍）- revered for its passionate and exquisite depiction of nature. Lyrics are below in both Chinese and English. 

FURTHER DISCUSSION ON CULTURAL HERITAGE AND IDENTITY

The meanings and values ascribed to heritage and the memories that are developed from it become a significant symbol for collective identity; they can thus serve to keep groups and communities together. …ascribing meanings and values to cultural heritage helps them to come together and create a sense of belonging. This in turn provides a critical resource for survival in a complex world.

Veysel Apaydin

Through interdisciplinary art practice, Lily and Honglei endeavor to revive/reconstruct intangible Chinese cultural heritages that have experienced sharp declines caused by modernization and globalization. The Red String is another project through which the artist collaborative sheds light on the relations of Chinese American cultural heritage, identity construction, community survival, and healing. Their practice responds to some important questions and topics in cultural heritage studies: 

1. Is studying/practicing in cultural heritage unifying or dividing groups and communities? 
2. Why is intangible cultural heritage particularly important to immigrant identity, sense of belonging and community building?
3. How can cultural memory and heritage be used as a tool for communities’ survival? Furthermore, how to develop and create new heritage as proof of our existence? 
4. If “cultural memory and heritage are processes that actively engage the social, economic and political life of the present; they are living processes and a tool for the resilience of communities (Apaydin 2020). …the construction, reconstruction …is part of the transformation, development and therefore overall process of heritage,” then how can we, Asian Americans, produce new heritage by transforming heritage from the past? As a resilient community, how can we develop and create new heritage as collective memories?
5. Transformation and reuse of heritage can be part of memory accumulation and continuity; it can create opportunities for developing new heritage and memory and may be helpful and beneficial for communities (DeSilvey 2017).
6. We should be able to facilitate more opportunities for the development and transformation of heritage, in order to adapt to a changing world (Apaydin 2020)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Created by Lily Honglei Art Studio, The Red String public art project is commissioned and produced by More Art NYC, in collaboration with NYC Parks, Kunqu Society of New York, partially funded by Queens Art Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Flushing Town Hall, and fiscally sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts.

If you have any questions regarding collaborations or presentations, please contact us.