Asian American art collective concludes spring series
Building community, safe spaces sessions’ goal
Situated on a small, grassy hill in Homewood Cemetery section three, a piece of land dedicated to Chinese Americanburials can be found.
Headstones with Mandarin characters and English names alike indicatethe some 250 who lay at rest at thePoint Breeze site.
Easy to miss and seemingly unknown to the general public, this area of the cemetery offers a window into what life was like for some ofthe first Asian people who lived in the city.
The plot of land was purchased in 1901 by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association as a way to further support Chinese immigrants in the area. The headstones hold history, giving visitors a look into what life was like for Asian Americans in Pittsburgh in the late 1800s, said artist Lena Chen, who has been commissioned to research the section as part of Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Art’s 2020 Artists Bridging Social Distance in the Public Realm initiative.
Through her research and study of the section, Lena discovered further evidence of Pittsburgh’s original Asian population, Chinese immigrants who worked at the Beaver Falls Cutlery Factory. By using one of the recurring surnames carved into multiple headstones, Lena said she also found and connected with the daughter of Yuen Yee, the last mayor of Pittsburgh’s historic Chinatown.
“A lot of the people who are buried there were actually descended from the same place that my ancestors come from, and it’s obviously a very different type of migration experience for them … but it was cool to get connected to that aspect of Pittsburgh history because I definitely don’t think of Pittsburgh as a place with a huge Asian population,” she said.
Last month, Lena, a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a master of fine arts degree, used her knowledge to lead a tour
of the Chinese cemetery as part of Jaded’s spring programming.
Launched in April, Jaded is a collective of artists and cultural producers that “builds interethnic coalitions to create more safe spaces of kinship and addresses racial trauma while celebrating cultural heritage,” according to their website.
Lena, along with fellow artists and Jaded collective co-founders, Anny Chen and Caroline Yoo, organized a wide range of free events, also titled Jaded, spanning from April into June to celebrate and honor Asian American and Pacific Islander culture and heritage.
In addition to the Chinese cemetery tour, the list of events included a walking tour of historic Chinatown with Shirley Yee, daughter of Yuen Yee, and musical performances at Chinatown’s landmark plaque dedication in April.
People were also invited to sign up for workshops held over the course of the three month schedule.
“It’s workshops by us, for us,” Anny, who, in addition to her art, works as an outreach associate at CMU, said. “We just want to be more of a conduit for creating this kind of network for other people to also bring their own knowledge and their own power in to and share it.”
Events like Jaded’s kimchi workshop with artist Sunni Park or bookbinding with artist Brent Nakamoto were designed for PittsburghAsian people to connect with one another in a city that doesn’t quite have a centralized Asian space, Anny said.
This lack of a centralized space in Pittsburgh, like an active Chinatown or KTown, was recently highlighted in the rise in hate crime and aggression toward AAPI due to anti-Asian pandemic sentiments as there was no set place for Asian Americans to gather and heal.
In response to last year’s Atlanta shooting that killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, Anny, Lena and Caroline organized REST: A Day of Healing & Art at the Carnegie Museum ofArt last March.
The event offered activities highlighting AAPI culture and saw over 100 attendees while raising over $8,000. It also showed the three women a “real need to build community ... among AAPI residents and Pittsburgh creatives,” Lena said.
“All of the people who came to our REST event, and especially the AAPI femme, queer, nonbinary community, were very loud in that they said ‘there needs to be more of this type of safe space events in Pittsburgh’ and that was the big cry,” Caroline, an MFA candidate at CMU, said.
Having backgrounds in institutions and organizing, Caroline said she felt they could initiate programming to cultivate such community and connection.
“A lot of institutions had never planned AAPI programming just because they didn’t know where to start,” Caroline said. “Nobody was willing to take up that labor because a lot of people are daunted by working with institutions or administration.”
Together, the three women combined their experience and skill sets in art, education, applying for grants, working with institutions and networking to launch the Jaded collective and spring programming.
Helping organize a series aimed to bring Asian-identifying people with different skills and cultural backgrounds together has been a dream come true, Anny said.
Hosting individuals and artists who don’t fit the typical or traditional Asian stereotype is “really important to me because it shows they’re being stewards of something that is traditional, but it shows that tradition can evolve,” Anny said, pointing out that Asian Americas often see narrow representation.
“[Artists] are bringing their own flavor into it,” she said of the events. “They’re bringing their own experiences of learning from their parents or whatever community they grew up in or their own research or their experiences submerging themselves in their own culture and learning about who they are and where they came from, which is really beautiful.”
Concluding the event series was an onigiri, Japanese rice ball, workshop with artist Ginger Brooks Takahashi at Phipps Conservatory followed by a potluck picnic on Flagstaff Hill on Friday. Braving the heat, Asian individuals and allies gathered on blankets in Schenley Park to share their favorite Asian foods and beverages along with tidbits of their experiences.
“Sometimes at our events, I’ll take a step back and watch everybody, and it’s really cool to see that everybody’s so excited about what our programming is, whether it just be making friends with the person who’s next to you at the workshop or about learning something new that they didn’t know,” Caroline said. “There’s just something so beautiful about creating this type of space and I think that’s what Jaded is doing.”
Looking ahead, the collective will be hosting a yinyang-themed disco with DJ Formosa on Saturday at Cobra, a club in Bloomfield, to celebrate a successful run of events.
Funded by CMU’s FrankRatchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Opportunity Fund and the Office for Public Art, attendees can enjoy music and dance performances and also get free flash tattoos.
But beyond that, the founders of Jaded hope to pass the collective on to other enthusiastic creatives and organizers. Because the three creators all look to move out of Pittsburgh in the years to come, they are currently looking to bring more people on as Jaded was built to be sustainable for the future.
“Part of the sustainability of initiatives like this is to see who else can do the work and share those opportunities,” Lena said. “We’re very, very happy to pass the baton. Even just in the past few months of hosting these events and also attending other events held by our friends, we’ve amassed a lot of goodwill and we’ve started to slowly build those connections that are necessary if we were to try to plan something inthe future.”
Jaded events have helped show that there are more Asian people in Pittsburgh than most people think, accordingto Anny
“With all the coverage about racism and all the trauma, it really created the necessity for us to know each other and care for each other,” Anny said. “And then it just gathers, it builds. It has its own inertia.”
“There’s so many of us here and while we’re here, we can eat together and feast together and share,” she continued. “Even if you’re only here temporary, or if you just got here, or if you’ve been here a long time and feel disconnected, we want to be with you and share.”