Chinese-ness by Wing Young Huie. 2013 – Present. To be published in Fall 2018.
A searching collection of travels, stories, and possibilities, Chinese-ness is Minnesota-born photographer Wing Young Huie’s personal exploration of what he could have been. If he had not been born in this country, if he had not gone to college, if he had married a Chinese woman and settled down, if he had pursued any of a million disparate paths of life. The part-documentary, part-memoir series seeks to resolve Huie’s own cultural dilemma of bridging Chinese heritage and American lifestyle.
Much like many of Huie’s previous projects, which featured innovative and communally integrative components, Chinese-ness brings both the photographed subject and Huie into equal focus. Huie first photographs a man with a life vastly diverging from his own, then hands him the camera and asks him to photograph Huie wearing his clothes. Many subjects are photographed with boards noting their aspirations or inspirations, demonstrating the gamut of human desire, ambition, and history.
Huie recently received Minnesota’s highest artistic honor, the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, for his continued work portraying socioeconomic and urban changes.
Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.
