Kelly Wang Featured in NBC News 

NBC News featured VillageOneArt co-artist Kelly Wang‘s work which centers around anti-Asian racism.

As anti-Asian violence rose in 2020, Kelly Wang began putting together a collection of compacts carrying messages to tell her story.

Wang, who was born and raised in New York City, would often field questions about where she was from.

“And if I say, ‘Well, I’m from New York,’ they’re like, ‘No, but where are you from originally?'” she said. “Like, OK, so you want to know, what’s my background? What’s my ethnicity?”

The hateful words on some mirrors are accompanied by other mirrors displaying images of bamboo paintings and calligraphy, representing the Chinese culture Wang said she only embraced when she began taking ownership of her ethnic background.

“Before I had these experiences, I wasn’t really forced to be interested in or even to recognize my different origins, the fact that I have this past,” she said. “So even though these comments were very painful initially, ultimately, they led me to do a lot of deeper self-exploration. I never wanted to be hiding from who I am.”

For Wang, expression through art is one way for Asian Americans to speak up. Few artistic works center around anti-Asian racism, she said, and many within the community still keep quiet about their trauma and history.

As much as her exhibit helps tell their story, she said it also raises questions about the identity they share.

“I think a lot about the term ‘Asian American’ and whether that’s even something that people call themselves until they face the responses to their existence from the outside world,” Wang said. “Because I always thought of myself as an American, and there is no American race.”