The Name, The Words, The Memory celebrates Asian American experiences of struggle, healing, and resilience. In response to surging anti-Asian violence and the cultural stigmatization of mental health, the exhibition centers the voices of a "model minority" whose feelings and traumas are often made invisible. Originally debuted as Because Freedom at Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA, on August 4, 2023, the show coincided with the originally scheduled start date of the 2023 Asian American Literature Festival before its controversial cancellation by the Smithsonian.
Transforming Carlow University's Art Gallery into a reading room, this exhibition draws from diasporic literature to reveal the impact of colonialism, conflict, and migration on our relationship to language.
Taking its title from a quote from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée, the exhibition features passages from writers of Asian heritage, which are stitched and embroidered into brocade banners. The intricate pattern of the fabric obscures parts of the words, mimicking the ways in which migration can unsettle memory and render us unintelligible. Alongside the banners are two bookcases containing personal ephemera from the artists and copies of the referenced texts bookmarked on favorite pages. Inspired by East Asian ancestral altars, the bookcases invite visitors to treat the books with reverence while simultaneously presenting them as the literary inheritance of future generations.
