Five Cents a Can: Making Visible the Invisible

This project raises questions about migration, inequality, and aging while poor and Asian. I started painting the canners after I encountered, for months, the same elderly Chinese lady going through garbage in the back of my apartment building every Saturday morning. When we became friends, Choi Yi told me she is 93 years old, has four children and many grand-children, and she used to cut threads in garment factories until they all closed in Chinatown. She lives in the public housing near me. Her spirit and pride in what she has accomplished, and her everyday resilience in picking up cans and bottles, inspired me to question whether one should be aging with such hard work for bare survival.

These paintings and installations play with what is real versus the distorted perceptions of our own realities. While many people are striving for the comforts of a nicely furnished home and getaway vacations, most canners toil just to survive. What people don’t know is that many canners in the area were once garment factory workers who earned a regular income. But their work slowly moved abroad and they lost their jobs. Their reality reminds us that working people are only numbers on a profit and loss spreadsheet that knows no humanity - people’s work can suddenly vanish and their livelihood gone.

(Note: Installations are collaborative creations with artist Alvin Tsang.)

*Supported by Asian Women Giving Circle and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

**More paintings will be added to this ongoing project.