“It’s a collage of memories past and present. Artists have the agency to create our own world, so my work is a mix of fact and fiction. I like to give people room for their own story in the image.”
— Chelsea Ryoko Wong
The oeuvre of the San Francisco-based artist Chelsea Ryoko Wong is one that celebrates cultural and racial diversity. Her merged background as a daughter to a Hong Kong father and Japanese-American mother has endowed her with both a connection to her Asian roots and an openness to embrace differences. In art, she has keenly created Asian-American narratives enlivened by colourful compositions, childlike touches and multicultural themes.
In Untraditional Dim Sum Restaurant, Wong channels the motif of Cantonese-style dim sum into her vision of diversity. With a unique visuality informed by previous training in design and printmaking, she imbues the dim sum restaurant with vibrant colours of pink, green, blue, and purple. Appreciating this liveliness and dynamism, Wong boldly enriches the cultural facets of this venue traditionally (or stereotypically) rendered red to evoke Chineseness. Against this backdrop, she further situates her happy multiracial characters in a refreshing setting that well balances nature and humanity. Paired together with Tea Ceremony in Tokyo in the 2021 exhibition Sun’s Energy, the work is tellingly autobiographical: the two draw together upon the two Asian halves of Wong’s origin. Engaging her own family history, Wong weaves a broader dream of inclusion and unity: ‘We all have very different origin stories, but we grew up as a family—and we’re still a family.’i
“We as humans, gendered and non-gendered creatures, people of all colours from all lineages, have the agency to control the way we think, manifest happiness, create joy and experience life the way we want to. For me, joy is one emotion in my daily routine that has the power to heal and transform.”
— Chelsea Ryoko Wong
Speaking of joy, Wong reflects on the various social expectations and restraints she experienced as an Asian American woman: ‘[S]ociety didn’t give us a lot of permission to experience joy. TV shows informed us we are allowed to be subservient, smart, nerdy, and hard-working; and magazine ads said they don’t make clothes or makeup for us. And the news today makes us feel othered, attacked, and brutalised.’ Hardship of such life has indeed formed the backdrop of many Asian American narratives, from the earlier literary classic The Joy Luck Club to the more recent film Everything Everywhere All at Once. Untraditional Dim Sum Restaurant depicts a joyful scene in an Asian restaurant with quintessential motifs—a fish tank lines the walls of the restaurant, and a dim sum cart is moving between the tables. Wong brings together figures from different backgrounds, all enjoying a carefree moment together with their friends or family. Through creating a warm and uplifting utopia within her own painterly space, Wong expresses her wishes for a society where cultural divides no longer exist.
With this light-hearted optimism, Wong has been hoping to reconcile the more depressive aspects of contemporary life. Currently represented by the locally based Jessica Silverman Gallery, she has participated in group exhibitions dedicated to promoting gender, racial, or cultural diversity and inclusion, including Wonder Women at Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles and New York, 2022, and WOMEN 我們: From Her to Here at Chinese Culture Center, San Francisco, 2021. In addition, the artist has proactively brought her loving art to the communities through large-scale mural projects, including the mural for Hon’s Wun Tun Noodle House in 2020 as part of Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco’s 100 Days Action Project Chinatown in supporting the community facing the pandemic lockdown.