Familiarly Foreign

After sharing their stories, participants were invited to join in a week-long experience: keep their Asian objects at Welcome Project as part of the Familiarly Foreign exhibition featuring everyone’s objects and stories. Familiarly Foreign investigates the contemporary functions of
Asian objects in non-Asian homes. By gathering
a multitude of these objects and stories, the exhibition reveals a more intimate relationship
to Asian culture than previously imagined in
a country where “Asian” is often equated
with “non-American.”

The exhibition contains a display resembling that of anthropological museums that gather and show a large collection of exotic or mysterious Asian objects for the purpose of trying to give a local audience an understanding of a specific culture and type of people. However, in
contrast to that, what’s actually on display here is not the beauty and curiosity of the objects but rather revealing how the object is treated and used—a literal display of the kinds of curiosity there is towards Asian objects and culture from non-Asian people. On the side opposite to the display is the interviews about objects from non-Asian people all over the country, showing the wide range of Asian objects that people have.

By gathering these objects together, this exhibition presents an initial false perception that these items are coming from some Asian person’s home and that this is a display of their life for the audience to learn about. However, as they take a closer look at the interview books, viewers will then realize that all of these objects came from non-Asian people in Cincinnati and are things that they’ve had for parts of their lives ranging from 1 to 30 years.

This realization encourages further thought—
how has Asian culture been a part of the lives of people who would have no trouble being seen as American? And what are some examples of Asian culture as being a part of non-Asian American culture and homes, ranging from
more superficial interests in Asian aesthetics
to deeper connections with Asian cultural practices in daily life?

Another layer of meaning is that for many of these Asian items, actual Asian people wouldn’t have them or wouldn’t want to keep in their home, sometimes because these items are just not meant to be used in those ways, but there’s also that deeper issue that Asians in America are often treated as perpetual foreigners, and in their process of trying to assimilate into the so-called dominant American culture which is actually a white-American culture, they might feel shame about having things like these that could possibly make them seem more foreign and make people think that they’re not American. As a person who’s always felt more American than Taiwanese, for many years when I was living in the US, I was very self-conscious of the kinds of things that I have that might make people think of stereotypes, for example, I wouldn’t want to wear clothes that have Chinese characters on them, and this act of cutting association with Asian elements is in sharp contrast to how non-Asian people would adopt Asian things, even Asian character tattoos, as a way to add complexity to their life or personality.