Immigrants leave sad paper trail

The Museum of Chinese in America's exhibition, FOLD: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures, offers a lens to consider past and current US immigration policies through Chinese traditional paper folding folk art.

Items from the Museum of Chinese in America exhibition, FOLD: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures on display.​ ​The exhibition will run through March 25​. ​HONG XIAO /​ ​CHINA DAILY

The show will be on view through March 25, 2018, features paper art created by Chinese immigrants detained between 1993 and 1997 at York County Prison, Pennsylvania, after the ship they were on, the Golden Venture, carrying 286 passengers, ran aground off the coast of Rockaway Beach, New York in 1993.

The paper sculptures depict everyday objects and scenes that remind the detained Chinese immigrants of home (lanterns and pagodas), ideals of America (eagles) and feelings based on their imprisonment (caged birds).

What emerged during their incarceration was not only a new hybrid style of folk art called qian zhi, or "a thousand papers", but a policy of indefinite detention for asylum-seekers.

Photographs and archived materials provide a social and political context, while a newly produced video chronicles key immigration legislation since the detainment that today impacts the lives of immigrant communities.

Comprised of excerpts from interviews with attorneys, scholars and those directly involved in the Golden Venture story, the video is played on a loop and at the beginning of each public presentation.

"FOLD represents a longstanding trajectory at MOCA that critically explores contemporary immigration issues through its historical antecedents, ranging from the legacies of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to McCarthy era surveillance of Chinese immigrants after World War II," said curator Andrew Rebatta.

Rebatta said visitors will learn how the disproportionate punishments in our current immigration system are rooted in the story of the Golden Venture passengers, who were then at the center of a national immigration debate.

Accompanying the exhibition, screenings, panel discussions, performances and workshops will expand the conversation and understanding of immigration issues during a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment, and at a time when the world's population of displaced peoples is at unprecedented levels.

"We too easily forget the foundation of US character - our immigrant pillars," said museum president Nancy Yao Maasbach.

"Chinese immigration history to the US, including my own family's journey, is characterized by tenacity, sacrifice, perseverance, sadness, and hope," she said.

Despite a century of being unwelcomed, she said, "The Chinese were not deterred. Their hope to enter the United States - or 'The Beautiful Country' - prevailed as an enviable life outcome."

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com