Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-based artist Ho Tam has learned a lot about his family’s history in California during his residency at 41 Ross, the San Francisco gallery operated by the Chinese Culture Center.
The gallery and surroundings are the site of the first Culture Center-sponsored Chinatown Ross Alley Zine Festival on Saturday. The free event features work by Tam, his publishing company Hotam Press and independent collectives and artists of color, as well as giveaways, film screenings and DJ music.
Noting the allure of zines, Tam says, “People understand how expressive they are. They want something tactile, not big budget, coming without censorship. It’s an appealing media to distribute new ideas.”
Pleased to be given liberty to do whatever he wanted during his residency, which began in September, Tam, who moved from Hong Kong to Canada as a teen, says, “It’s inspiring for a person like me who is of Chinese descent. That’s the highlight. I’ve gotten a sense of my family’s history and how they lived, some of them in Chinatown.”
Tam’s complex family background was largely unknown to him before he came to San Francisco for the project. His limited awareness of family history in California came from his father and a scattering of information about his great-grandfather.
A visit to Angel Island changed everything: “When I first came here, I had no preconceptions. I knew the amount of studio time I had and I wanted to do family history research on the side,” he says. After going to Angel Island, he says, “I began to understand the documents I needed to find to understand my history and asked my cousin in Hong Kong to provide the name of my great aunt.”
From that, Tam sketched a family tree and searched for more information. He discovered his great-grandfather arrived in California during the 1850s Gold Rush era and lived in Marysville. After he died in the early 1900s, Tam’s great-grandmother returned to China with several of their and his second wife’s 12 children.
“I’m still processing this and relating it to my experience. I had no idea where my ancestors were in America. … I wondered why they left America. Two of my relatives reached out to me and now, I have a lot of family in California. It sparked a reunion, and I also visited Marysville.”
Tam, who earned fine arts degrees from McMaster University in Ontario, Bard College in New York and participated in Whitney Museum of American Arts’s Independent Studies Program, has focused on mass media, race, politics and social activism in his work.
“The Yellow Pages,” his alphabet book (also a short film), spotlights North Americans’ stereotypes and cliches about Chinese and Asian cultures.
“The Company of Men” is his photographic series of businessmen making their way to work; “A Brief History of Me” is a chronological series of 51 photos with each page representing one year in his life from birth to age 51, connected to a timeline with corresponding historical events.
Tam says artists need outlets to convey not just their physical art, but social messages. “It’s the most efficient way to reach the public. Artists interested in social justice activism can do whatever they want with just paper and writing or drawing tools. I like to do it in a beautiful, artistic way in terms of packaging and presentation because there’s value in looking at appealing things. It’s the art form I like and know best.”
Additional indie artists and publishers participating on Saturday are: Everything Matters Press, Floss Editions, writer Lisa Hsia, California College of the Arts student collective Lab94107.cca, Sming Sming Books, illustrator-designer Jane Trieu, Unity Press, iconic punk publisher V. Vale, Wasted Books and CCC’s Design Shop.
The Chinatown Ross Alley Zine Festival runs from noon to 4 p.m. Nov. 9 in Ross Alley, between Washington and Jackson streets, San Francisco. Admission is free. Visit cccsf.us.
The post Vancouver’s Ho Tam among diverse artist lineup in free SF Chinatown zine festival appeared first on Local News Matters.