Gary Wong's Solo Show HOMELAND SECURITY: Boxes and Skins

LOS ANGELES - Jan. 22, 2024 - PRLog -- Eastern Projects 900 N Broadway Suite 1090, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Exhibition: Gary Wong's Solo Show HOMELAND SECURITY: Boxes and Skins

Exhibition Dates: Jan 27- March 09, 2024

Opening Reception: Jan 27, 2024 5:00PM-9:00PM

Closing Reception: March 09, 2024 5:00PM-9:00PM

"HOMELAND SECURITY:

Boxes and Skins"

Join us this SATURDAY, January 27, 5-9pm for the Opening Reception of Gary Wong's SOLO SHOW: HOMELAND SECURITY Boxes and Skins.

7pm Eastwind Lion Dancers

8pm Charlie Chan Lo Fi Session

Wong's legendary great grandfather, Wong Bow, was twelve years old when he sailed unaccompanied on a boat from China to California's Golden Gate: San Francisco. His adventure included being taken under the wing of the ship's captain (probably put to work); laboring with his uncle and cousin on some of the many big ditches, flumes, and canals of the Gold Rush era (which negatively impacted thousands of Indigenous Americans); surviving a virus that swept through the Chinese encampment and killed his uncle and cousin; and enduring another 'adoption' by yet another white man who owned a bottle factory in Eureka.

The particulars of much of his story lost to time, we know that Wong Bow became a rugged individualist and made a decision not to live in the city. He instead chose mountain life in Happy Camp, a small settlement in the Klamath National Forest. As Chinese were not allowed to live among white men in the towns, Wong Bow was welcomed by the local Indigenous Americans, the Kuruk. He learned their traditions, and had a family with a Kuruk woman. Now dubbed "China Bow," he mined silver and jade, and created a pack train business, driving provisions over the mountains in all seasons between Happy Camp and Crescent City. At some point, China Bow sent for a mail-order Chinese bride, and Gary Wong's grandfather was born in Happy Camp.

China Bow's immigration story and that of the family he started here is very American. It may well be both contrasting and mirroring of the stories of Native American Tribes, but it is what first brings Indigenous Americans to Mr. Wong's consciousness. And as the Kuruk were the only California tribe to grow tobacco, it is both ironic and a tribute that Wong has created this body of work, HOMELAND SECURITY, on the cedar linings - or divider skins, of the wooden cigar boxes he has been collecting for years.

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