Peruvian Artists of Chinese Descent Shed Light on a Long History of Migration

“Chinese migrants arriving in the 19th century didn’t speak Spanish — had no knowledge of the language — and found themselves in an adverse environment,” curator Marco Loo tells Hyperallergic.

Jennifer Shyue October 14, 2019

LIMA, Peru — At first glance, there seems to be almost no text in 土生:回乡 Tǔshēng. Retornos al país del centro, an exhibition at Lima’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC). As you walk in, the wall to the right lists the three featured artists — Héctor Chiang, Ana Chung, and Christi Zorrilla — and the titles of their pieces. And that’s it. The exhibition’s trilingual introduction (English, Spanish, Chinese) is out of view, printed on the other side of the panels that divide the room in two.

There is in fact a lot of text in this room — it’s just mostly inaccessible, in one way or another, to the museum’s average visitor. There are small phrases in Chinese seal script written on the hanging panels. In Chiang’s “PER+CHN,” labyrinthine lines etched into two large aluminum squares form the almost imperceptible words “秘鲁民族” (“Peruvian nation” in Chinese) and “CHINA.” An accordion-style photo book, part of Chiang’s other installation, is filled with braille and Chinese. Behind where the book is propped, a wall of windows is bisected by an LED strip; marching up that strip of light is a single line of tiny, tiny words.

The works themselves are accompanied by no wall text. In the absence of textual explanations, visitors feel distance, perhaps, or confusion, even alienation. This opacity is deliberate, said curator Marco Loo. “Chinese migrants arriving in the 19th century didn’t speak Spanish — had no knowledge of the language — and found themselves in an adverse environment,” he said. “I was interested in having people relive this a little […] get[ting] their bearings in a space that’s completely unfamiliar.”

This attention toward language is immediately clear in the exhibition title, 土生:回乡 Tǔshēng. Retornos al país del centro — the first part in Mandarin and the second in Spanish. “Tǔshēng,” the Mandarin pinyin for “土生” (“born here”), is the etymon of “tusán,” a Peruvian Spanish word that has come to encompass all people of Chinese descent — including the exhibition’s curator and three artists. “Retornos al país del centro” (“Returns to the center country” or to “the Middle Kingdom,” as the English version of the introductory text has it) is a nod to the literal translation of China’s name in Chinese, “中国,” which comprises the words “中” (“middle”) and “国” (“country”). The Chinese “回乡,” on the other hand, means “return home” or “return to one’s native place.” All this is intimately tied to the exhibition’s central question: What does a return — whether to the center or to “home” — look like for three artists who are many generations removed from that other place?

Peru is home to Latin America’s largest Chinese diasporic population. The first shipload of Chinese coolies arrived in Peru’s port city of Callao in October 1849, making this year the 170th anniversary. Though there had been Chinese in Peru since the arrival of the Spanish, after the abolition of slavery, Chinese laborers were imported large-scale to replace slaves on haciendas and guano islands. The great-grandfathers of Chung, Loo, and Zorrilla, and Chiang’s grandfather arrived in the first decades of the 20th century from different areas of Guangdong seeking economic opportunities. The vast majority of Chinese migrants to Peru during this period fit that profile: male and Hakka- or Cantonese-speaking from the coastal province also known as Canton.

More:
https://hyperallergic.com/522287/tusheng-retornos-al-pais-del-centro-mac-lima/