By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

What is “home” to you? What about “homeland”?” Do you have more than one? How do these places—be they emotional, mental, or physical—define you as a person? How are your “home” or “homeland” connected to your identity? Do you have more than one identity?

These are just some of the questions asked by “Lost & Found: Searching for Home,” an exhibition starting at the Wing Luke Museum on Friday, Nov. 15. The exhibition, to paraphrase Wing Luke’s description, explores concepts of race, identity, and belonging as they pertain to the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) diaspora. There are no right or wrong answers to questions of home and identity, but there are commonalities. There are many ways to “go home” and there are many ways that AAPIs have left home. For some (not very many, in our experience so far), “home” is here in the United States. For most, it is a place they left, and maybe can’t return to for reasons as varied as each person—could be a financial impossibility; could be “home” no longer exists due to war or natural disaster; could be all of a person’s family lives somewhere else now. Which is why, for many of us, home is where our loved ones are.

A selection of artists were asked to present their concepts of “home” or “homeland” through their chosen art medium. Some brought in works they had already been working on and other works were commissioned for the exhibition. Lauren Iida’s contribution is the latter, and will be one of the first and last things visitors see as they enter and leave the exhibition space. Iida, an artist who specializes in hand-cut paper, was provided by the Wing Luke with stories written in from the community that dealt with the topic of “returning to home.” From these, Iida built “memory nets,” a well-known part of her repertoire wherein she extracts pieces of people’s memories and inserts them into the “nets.” Could be an image from a photo, could be a beloved memento.

“It creates a tapestry of shared experience,” Iida told the Asian Weekly. “Whatever topic the memory net is focusing on, that moment, that idea, is gleaned from symbolic objects that are ‘trapped’ so that we can temporarily experience them and then they go back into the ether.” Iida  has made memory nets in Cambodia, France, and the United States, such as regarding the Japanese American experience in the incarceration camps during WWII. Of Japanese ancestry herself, Iida is one of those who cannot completely “go back” to her homeland. She has connected with many places, yet her family lineage stems from Fukushima, Japan, now infamous due to the nuclear accident that occurred there in 2011 because of an earthquake. 

How do you “go back” to a place that, well, it’s still there, but it’s not the place your grandparents knew? Maybe you can’t, completely. Can we ever go home really at all? Yet we can have a conversation about what home means to us. Iida has done this with another piece included in the exhibition: a discarded nuclear power facility fan blade (yep, a real one) that she has carved, and which lights up from inside “eerily,” she described. 

“I’ve always been a traveler and adventurer, but I’ve also always been trying to find home or make home for myself.”

A lot of the AAPI challenge of feeling “at home” comes from race and ethnicity. If a person is biracial, such as Iida, or has lived his or her entire life outside of their parents’ homeland, it’s hard to “connect” to any home. There is no sense of belonging in either place—back in the motherland or in the United States. 

“I’m like a stranger in both places,” said Kyler Pahang, another artist participating in the exhibition. “Not American enough to be American. Not Filipino enough to be Filipino.” Pahang pointed out, though, that “family makes it feel like home.”

A Cry for Uran, Kyler Pahang, 2024. (Courtesy of Kyler Pahang and Wing Luke Museum.)

Pahang contributed 2D works to “Lost & Found” that deal with, in his words, “humidity and grief.” Why? If you are from the Philippines, maybe you are already nodding in understanding. These are two things that Pahang associates foremost with his family’s “homeland,” where he has mostly visited when there has been a cause for mourning—a death in the family. Because it is so humid there, he has combined the two in his mind and in his work for “Lost & Found,” in which you will notice particularly evocative shadowy shapes and a melancholy blue and forest green palette. “There are a lot of memories I have that are tied to rain,” Pahang told the Asian Weekly. He feels that, because he does not know the language, he has lost part of his identity. “But I know how it should taste,” he said, referring to the wonderful Filipino cuisine.

A lot of people who are estranged from their “homes” or “homelands” start with taste, with food. That’s what brings “home” back to them. Hilary Lee, who you might know as the former exhibition manager at Chihuly Garden and Glass, started her exploration of “home” with images of food. Lee has been experimenting with digital art for some time. However, this will be her first in person, physical, exhibition where her works are shown. 

“I love food…It’s such a baseline entry point and common denominator for Asians and Asian Americans,” Lee said. For Lee, there are many “facets” around food and those include identity and culture. There’s “comfort food,” which, if we think about it, takes its meaning from feeling like you’re at home.

Pritong Isda (Courtesy of Hilary Lee and the Wing Luke Museum)

Lee has learned to be comfortable with the many facets of her identity, too. She is Chamorro, Chinese, and American. She is one of the few that the Asian Weekly spoke to who very much does call a place in the United States “home”—San Francisco. Right now, she is concentrating on reconnecting with her Chamorro side. 

“I grew up learning that Chamorro people will be extinct in my lifetime,” she said. How could they live with that? This mythology almost made “home” in Guam disappear before it even existed. Lee knows she is missing parts of what might qualify her, in others’ eyes, as Chinese, Chamorro, or American; yet she has become comfortable with the parts of herself. 

As Seen in Guam (Courtesy of Hilary Lee and the Wing Luke Museum)

“I don’t have to necessarily go all the way to China to feel connected with Chinese culture,” she observed. Chinese American culture counts, too, as its own identity.

Dimsum Tea with Nyin Nyin (Courtesy of Hilary Lee and the Wing Luke Museum)

Every person has a different idea of home, yet there is much that overlaps. For an artist, it helps to use a pen, a pencil, paint, paper, to feel what “home” means to them. Visiting Wing Luke’s “Lost & Found” will doubtless provide awareness of much our communities have lost; yet it might also provide inspiration as to how much we can still claim. 

“We are in charge of our own destiny,” said Islanda Naughton, exhibition co-creator. “Home doesn’t have to be a physical place; it is just finding connection…and your own community within your family.” 

For more information, visit wingluke.org.

Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.

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