Text by Amelia McGarvey

Martin Wong (1946-1999) was one of the foremost Chinese-American artists of the 20th century, though he never ventured to China himself, nor did he speak the language. Rather, his understanding of “Chinese-ness” was mediated by his proximity to urban Chinatowns, most prominently San Francisco and New York, where he spent most of his life. It was these he felt most connected to, both personally and artistically. “I am not now nor would I ever be caught dead being an Asian American,” he once said; “I refuse to not be Oriental.”

Wong was attracted to Chinatown as an Orientalist simulacrum: what he called “the fantasy of the neon pagoda” – a sensuous and sinister mythology devised to reinforce Western supremacy. His 1993 exhibition Chinatown USA was the culmination of two decades of engagement with the subject: extravagant, dynamic paintings of Chinese- American urban life, in which what is a playground or spectacle for one person is home for another. In Ms Chinatown (1992), Wong paints his aunt, a former nightclub performer, reclining seductively on a sofa. Wong’s entanglement with the allure of Orientalism had its familial precedence, too.

This publication, Martin Wong: Chinatown USA, investigates this threshold space that Wong occupied. As well as Asian American, the book highlights the Puerto Rican, Black and Latino communities who occupied urban Chinatowns alongside Wong. The book accompanies the exhibition Martin Wong: Chinatown USA, curated by Yasafumi Nakamori, which opened last year at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago and runs until July – the first US monographic museum exhibition of his work since 2017. .