My Story is Golden
My Story is Golden creates opportunities for belonging by gathering community and elevating the voices, journeys, contemporary experiences, and cultural stories of the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) community of Albuquerque.
Video filmed by Christopher Walsh, edited by Joe Aidonidggis, and produced by Artists at Work.
COMMUNITY
My Story is Golden began in 2023 as a series of story sharing circles with Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) community.
By sharing and witnessing one another, the community mapped new cultural knowledge and collective imagination in a space that centered our stories and voices. By sharing story, we are creating our own lore: a self-determined body of knowledge about ourselves. My Story is Golden is a response to prevailing cultural exclusion and the reduction of Asian Americans into two categories: ornament or threat. It is also a reflection of my own urge to root and belong, which is a longing shared by many of the Asian diaspora.
BELONGING
My Story is Golden brings to focus the journeys, contemporary experiences, and cultural stories of Asian diasporic people in Albuquerque whose identities exist in a liminal space of underlying cultural erasure and loss. The project is a multi-dimensional public artwork that narrates our connection and disconnection to the land.
The project elevates self-determined APIDA visibility and disrupts hollow and flat narratives told about us. The most persistent one is that we do not exist in the Southwest: we are erased in the tri-cultural myth of New Mexico and it disinherits us from belonging. The project's intention is to create space for pan-Asian community to sense our belonging and responsibility to the land and stimulate cross-cultural dialogue.
VOICE & VISION
Community stories will be featured in audio/video installations and a series of ‘migrating’ tree sculptures that will be representations of trees found across Asia, symbolizing the co-existence of indigenous and non-indigenous trees, displacement and migration, and serving as portals for visitors to access (through embedded QR code) the stories of APIDA storytellers.
The 'migrating' trees will guide people to a monumental walk-in sculpture that will house an immersive, multimedia soundscape created with the voices and stories of community storytellers. The intention is to create a multi-sensory experience and respectfully root APIDA community to land, and thus, narrate our belonging.
My Story is Golden began as a community storytelling initiative designed as a year long residency with Artists at Work in partnership with the New Mexico Asian Family Center and CABQ Department of Arts & Culture. The project received a 2024-25 UETF Resiliency Residency and funding from CABQ Public Art.
