“REFLECTIVE URBANISMS: Mapping New York’s Chinatown,” highlighting the work of Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong, is currently on view at the St. Francis College (SFC) Art Gallery. Featuring architectural renderings of buildings and portraits of community members, the exhibition maps architectural changes that have occurred in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood, which was first established in the 1860s. The selected images show work in progress of an interactive, multimedia web project that will launch later this year.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Wong is a New York-based artist working at the boundary of art and architecture. Her work investigates the transformation of shared space over time. As a restorative-history project, the “REFLECTIVE URBANISMS” series aims to create an architectural archive that honors the personal stories of community members and connects them to the buildings. Transformations in buildings are visualized through reconstructed digital models of the buildings and investigated alongside the stories about these spaces.

“While our communities have persisted, grown and flourished into vibrant hubs, today they are threatened by gentrification and erasure,” said Wong. “The effects of the pandemic and racist, anti-Asian rhetoric continue to cast a long shadow on our Chinatowns. Our elders are passing away and, with them, our stories and histories.” Despite these challenges, Wong noted, North American Chinatowns remain remarkably resilient. “We have seen the rise in Chinatown community groups organizing to protect our elders, to innovate new ways of conducting business for local mom-and-pop shops and to nourish our Chinatown communities.”

Supported by The Laundromat Project’s artist-in-residence program, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP)’s Incubator Prize and the Asian Women Giving Circle, “REFLECTIVE URBANISMS” is part of a continuing series responding to the hardship Chinatowns across North America have endured in recent years. The project hopes to highlight the stories of the caretakers, owners, residents and stewards of Manhattan’s Chinatown buildings.

Located on the fifth floor of 179 Livingston Street in Brooklyn, the SFC Art Gallery is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “REFLECTIVE URBANISMS: Mapping New York’s Chinatown” will be on view through Friday, September 6, 2024. Please join us for a reception with the artist on Wednesday, July 31, from 6 to 8 p.m.