In Lily Honglei’s KITES: A Poem by an Immigrant, painted wooden kites float in the space, defying gravity but also carrying the weight of immigrant stories. Inspired by traditional Chinese kites and Eastern folk arts, the painting series depicts the immigrant community in Flushing, Queens. Wood panels are hand-cut into various symbolic shapes, such as a bird, butterfly, dragonfly, moon, or cloud, which are popular motifs of East Asian kites. Inspired by their cultural heritage, the duo’s work highlights the Asian diaspora and working-class Asian immigrant experience, reflecting the artists’ family sagas and community life. Through a contemporary visual art language, Lily Honglei creates images that honor the immigrant worker, from depictions of work on the railroads, which first brought Chinese immigrants to the United States, to present-day food delivery drivers. The floating images Lily Honglei creates coalesce into a celestial installation that captures the dreams and losses borne across generations and borders.
New Eight Immortals 158″ X 96″. Oil painting on wood panels.
Inspired by the linkage between flying kites and communication with deceased family members in ancient Chinese tradition, KITES: A Poem by an Immigrant commences with reflecting on the artist’s family endeavors and losses centered around immigration. The work expands its narrative by diving into the history of Chinese laborer migration to the US and depicting the resilience and vitality of the Asian immigrant community in the present day. The project consists of a series of kites in various shapes and sizes, with most pieces soaring in the air inside the gallery as if they are flying in a boundless sky. The project experiments with a new visual format integrating Asian folk arts traditions with contemporary art language, sharing human stories, poetic emotions, and the spirit of immigrant journeys.
In ancient China, people wrote the names of their family members on the kites and cut the strings when the kites flew high. The released kites would remove all the issues and troubles from the loved ones, blessing them with good energy from Nature. The kites represented undying souls traveling between heaven and humanity. Enkindled by this transcendental vision, we created KITES: Poems by An Immigrant, paying a tribute to the undying spirit of immigrants and migrants, who pursue a better future through arduous journeys.
Imitating traditional Chinese kite patterns, such as birds, goldfish, and a dragon, we started by depicting our family stories surrounding immigration, their many struggles, and tragedies. Then, we expanded the narrative to the history of Chinese immigration, focusing on the common people and the enclave, a perpetually invisible and marginal group in Western societies.
The project is part of our ongoing effort to synthesize our cultural heritage with contemporary art language – not only reflecting societal issues through symbolic images but also using the visual traditions from our heritage to make an original voice for our community. We hope that authenticity and innovation may contribute to a movement of new aesthetics that uniquely belong to our era when immigration has become a central theme in political and cultural dialogues.
As Chinese immigrant artists, we realize that cultural heritage has reshaped our immigrant experience, enabling a connection with the Asian immigrant community and constructing a mental space for renewal. Vice versa, our new identity in the West, time and geographical distances from the Eastern culture, and intellectual and psychological development in our new home country have fundamentally remade our view of our Asian cultural heritage. KITES: A Poem by An Immigrant is the outcome of this accumulation – immigrant’s struggles for survival and rerooting, pain for family separations and tragedies, mourning for lives lost on the journey, and courage to envision a better future deeply embedded in our spirits.
Breaking the boundary between painting and installation, the project aims to converge poetic sentiment with the harsh realities of the immigration journey. Our interest in Chinese folk arts, the visual forms often associated with the Asian immigrant identity and the working class, has grown increasingly intense over the years we have lived in the US. KITES imitates Chinese kite designs, taking the shapes of symbolic motifs such as a boat for the large centerpiece and a bird, butterfly, dragonfly, tree, and moon for other pieces dynamically arranged in the gallery space. Each ‘kite,’ although it can be considered an installation component, is an independent artwork with its unique narrative. Together, the ‘kites’ – in various shapes, dimensions, and color schemes – compose an epic poem about pursuing a freer and brighter future by overcoming seemingly insurmountable barriers.
The project has received support from Flushing Town Hall, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship, The Shed, and Queens Council on the Arts. The project is on view at The Shed, Open Call: Portals, from June 27 to August 24, 2025.
Photo credits: Marrisa Alper, The Shed, Lily Honglei Art Studio
At The Shed: Exhibition Installation, a Team Work
Design Notes & Context
I began to have a haunting vision of kites flying in the sky after learning that a boat carrying 200 migrants sank off the coast of Italy on a chilly day in February 2023, leaving many, including children, dead or missing. The kites, without strings, wander freely in the boundless space as if they are the souls of the migrants who have transformed and ascended into a higher dimension where death and injury cannot invade.
After a months-long experiment in design solutions, I decided to start by painting a series of kites that reflect my family stories.
In the 1920s, my grandfather studied abroad through the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, which sponsored Chinese students to study in the West as a form of financial compensation to China due to the excess of Boxer Indemnity. My grandfather spent nine years overseas, apart from his young wife and children remaining in China. Because of immigration and visa restrictions and financial challenges, he couldn’t reunite with his family even once; all they could do was write long and beautiful letters to each other – my mother recalled. After earning his PhD, my grandfather finally returned to his family in China. However, the long-term separation from his loved ones took a toll on his mental and physical health, and he passed away at age thirty-nine, leaving his wife and children to struggle for survival. This design symbolically depicts the family separated by the ocean and wishing for the magical golden fish to deliver letters swiftly to their loved ones.
KITE 2. Morning Glories of Chicago
KITE 2 focuses on my parents’ story. In the early 1980s, communist China began exchange programs with Western research institutions. My parents were invited to the University of Chicago as researchers in biology when my sister and I were still elementary school kids. Concerned about losing talent to Western countries, the Chinese government held their children hostage when parents worked abroad, forcing them to return as planned. After living in Chicago for some years, without reaching any solution of immigrating children to the US, my parents returned to China with a broken American dream. My family history sadly repeats itself: a few years after my father returned to China, he passed away in his early 40s of depression and frustration. This piece reflects that part of our family life with many unfulfilled dreams, painful separations over insurmountable geographic distance, and yet resilience represented by the undying morning glories.
KITE 3. Raccoon and Artist Family
Based on our family experience, the design depicts an immigrant family of three living in a basement apartment in Queens. The artistic family immerses itself in creativity despite the substandard living conditions: the father focuses on a painting, the child doodles with imagined characters, and the mother plays with fantastical shadow puppets. A raccoon, their frequent guest, is knocking on the small basement window.
KITE 4. Bamboo on Kissena Blvd
Additional designs aim to reflect the immigrant community and everyday life in Asian enclaves such as Flushing Chinatown. Inspired by a butterfly kite motif, which symbolizes renewal and rebirth in various cultures, the artwork portrays a multigenerational family residing in an apartment on Kissena Boulevard in Queens, a neighborhood known for its diverse immigrant communities, particularly Asian enclaves. Positioned in the center of the composition, the bamboo with oversized roots symbolizes the immigrant family’s adaptation and prosperity. Meanwhile, the two windows on both wings of the butterfly kite reveal challenging societal issues facing the communities and families: a hardline anti-immigration politician in front of the Capitol Hill on the left, and an unhoused migrant sleeping on the sidewalk in cold winter on the right.
KITE 5. Tree of Life on Main Street
Converging the patterns of a traditional Chinese dragonfly kite and the mystical Tree of Life, the painting constructs an upbeat backdrop for immigrant artists and street vendors working along Main Street in Downtown Flushing, the largest Chinatown in the world. The pairs of wings and the thriving tree signify the energy, strength, and American dreams that are indelible by the challenging realities in immigration journeys.
KITE 6, 7, 8.Moonlit Night I, II, III
Moonlit Night I, II, and III portray immigrant journeys and barriers on their way. In Eastern poetry, the moon is often related to travel, separation, and eventual reunion of loved ones.
KITE 9. IMMIGRANT (or I’M MIGRANT)
The design takes inspiration from name painting, a type of Chinese folk art integrating colorful motifs, such as flowers, birds, and other elements in nature, with Chinese characters to spell out a person’s name.
KITE 10: OVERLAND
Overland is the first transcontinental railroad partially constructed by Chinese laborers in the mid-19th century. We reimagine the railroad tracks decorated with traditional Chinese blue and white patterns, spotlighting early Asian migrants’ contribution to building the country’s essential infrastructure.
KITE 11. CENTERPIECE –Eight Immortals Cross the Sea
The large-scale painting reflects the history of Asian immigration, depicting immigrants from different eras in various occupations, from a railroad builder in the 19th century to a food delivery worker in the present day. The eight deities in the background are inspired by a popular Taoist tale of eight everyday people who collaborate and utilize their special skills to overcome numerous challenges, ultimately reaching their divine destination across the ocean. The foreground and background respond to each other, reinforcing the theme of the immigration journey, the challenges facing the marginalized group, and their courage to survive and thrive in their new destination. Taking the shape of a ship, the painting portrays the group marching forward into the future.
