Not Your China Doll: Art Inspired by Anna May Wong (May 1–June 19, 2024)
Accompanying "Not Your China Doll: A Retrospective of Anna May Wong's Trailblazing Career" in our Soho gallery was this exhibition in Chelsea Market. It featured the artwork of six AAPI and POC women artists working across various mediums, including oil paints, charcoal and ink, illustration, digital art, and collage.
About the curator
Katie Gee Salisbury is the author of Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Believer, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” She also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, she now lives in Brooklyn.
About the artists
Mina Chacko is an aspiring character designer and character animation student at the California Institute of the Arts.
Helen Chang finds inspiration in the ever-changing urban landscape of her native New York City. Chang's use of decollage, the process of revealing hidden layers and textures within found materials, adds depth and complexity to her collage compositions. Drawing inspiration from such culturally and visually iconic figures as Anna May Wong, Chang uses vintage film stills and assorted ephemera to reflect the dynamic and hybrid nature of the city as metaphor for identity.
Felicia Liang is an artist, illustrator, and risograph printmaker based in the Bay Area, California. Her work is inspired by the cultures and communities she’s around, as well as her own inner musings. She loves using color, experimenting with different mediums, and playing with a wide range of styles—from simple line drawings to maximalist compositions. Felicia is also a former Pearl River Mart artist-in-residence.
Tiffany Liang is an artist based in Manhattan, NY. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a major in film studies, but often found herself working in the painting studios late into the night. As a result, her work focuses on technique, history, and storytelling. Working primarily with oil paints, Tiffany meticulously creates large-scale portraits to reclaim space for figures who may have been lost or forgotten over time.
Linda Sandoval is a California native, born and raised in Los Angeles. She gathers inspiration from black and white photo stills of Hollywood’s yesteryear. One of her favorite subjects to include in her collages is the iconic Anna May Wong. Through her art, she hopes to create a world where different cultures and eras can coexist.
Elizabeth Yoo is a Korean-American fine artist, writer, and lifelong New Yorker. She specializes in key art for movie posters, physical media, and book covers. The poster she illustrated for Academy Award-winning director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy was named one of the best movie posters by Posteritati, Letterboxd, and Little White Lies. Her paintings, rendered in Japanese watercolor, Sumi ink, pastel, and charcoal, often evoke the glamor of Old Hollywood and film noir.
Accompanying materials
- Press release
- Highlights of the artwork
- "Anna May Wong Takes Center Stage at Chelsea Market" by Katie Gee Salisbury
[Photo by Cindy Trinh for Pearl River Mart]