untitled (ghost speak)

you and me and the only thing we know
2015 

a collaborative installation and drawing exhibition by g. mccandlish and a. liao culminating a two week long residency with Vacant Farm in Kansas City, MO.

Letters to Hop Alley: Drawing Displacement in STL’s Chinatown at Yeyo Arts in St. Louis, Missouri. by g. mccandlish and a. liao.

This project researched the displacement and leveling of the historical St. Louis Chinatown, Hop Alley. By plumbing government and community archives, the collaborative duo wrote and illustrated an exhibition-length letter to the under-remembered denizens of this midwestern ethnic enclave.

“You came from Guangdong. You sometimes learned English, you sometimes didn’t. You lived downtown. You supported each other. You were working class. You had celebrations. You were brutalized by the state. You were detained at borders. You faced the wrecking balls twice. You were born in the back of the laundry. You made a home in a landlocked state in the middle of a hostile country. We think of immigrants and Asians as an anomaly in the midwest, but you were here. We are here. We always were.”