★ AMERICAN LAUNDRY (Mending the Archive) (2022)
★ AMERICAN LAUNDRY (Mending the Archive) (2022)
“AMERICAN LAUNDRY (Mending the Archive)” (2022) is a collaborative, site-specific research project that emerges from the Worth Ryder Gallery’s locational relationship to San Francisco's Chinese laundries and direct proximity to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology and its archives.
Installation, performance, white button-up shirts, cotton muslin, cyanotype, screenprint, red thread, laundry carts, table, sewing machine, wire hangers, colonial red spray paint, and empire blue stripe. Variable dimensions.
Special Thanks To: Isaiah Acosta, Kalani Alcala, Tamar Beja, Addie Briggs, Ian Castro, Hamza Fahmy, Kala Fejzo, Ruby Jay, Elihu Knowles, Stella Kosta, April Ma, Brayan Ramos, Gabrielle Rivera, Ansley Stotelmyre, Stephanie Syjuco, Biruk Tewodros, Lea Yamashiro, Jasmine Zheng.
Collaboration with Lauren Anastasia
“AMERICAN LAUNDRY (Mending the Archive)” critiques the exploitative practices of institutional archives. UC Berkeley maintains the largest Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) incompliant inventory out of all the UCs and one of the largest in the nation. There are still ~400,000 artifacts in this inventory and ~9,500 ancestral human remains still awaiting return (as reported by the June 2020 NAGPRA Audit of the University of California). The Worth Ryder Gallery (where you are now) is situated just down the hall from the Hearst Museum where these artifacts and remains are held.
Acknowledging this history and UC Berkeley’s ongoing failures to return stolen artifacts and remains, this project proposes an alternative model for archive building. The material for this project was built through consensual, voluntary participation in direct contrast to the means in which UC Berkeley’s archive was amassed. This project gives a platform to people within our own communities, rather than extracting from external ones. Fifteen volunteer participants (whose names appear on the wall tag), our friends, family, and housemates, were interviewed on the central theme of American identity. Their words appear as text on screen prints (black&white), and images of their clothing appear as cyanotype prints (blue).
Between the 19th and 20th centuries, Western imperialist interventions in East Asia forced thousands to abandon their home countries. Enduring social, cultural, and economic barriers, Chinese and other Asian immigrants were forced into the service sector, specifically in laundry businesses. From San Francisco to New York City, laundry became a way for Chinese immigrants to hold onto hopes of the “American Dream.” Decades later, cleaning and mending clothes remains some of the most undervalued, yet necessary services done by immigrants and other marginalized groups.
Li Dai Loong Rosenberg’s grandparents ran Chong Wo Laundry on California Street in San Francisco.