Healing, Radical Hope, & Community Care

An Asian Pacific American History Month Exhibit

On display at Central Library through May 31, 2022

Healing, Radical Hope, & Community Care celebrates APAHM by bringing together the work of Asian American artists that visually and poetically imagines a just world through art, story, and togetherness. Commissioned by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, these pieces were first showcased as part of a Day of Remembrance event that brought together a multiracial and multigenerational gathering of community members in solidarity with the victims, survivors, and families impacted by the Atlanta spa shootings on March 16, 2021.

This exhibition features seven pieces that explore collective grief and the ways it beckons communities towards care, healing, and radical hope. Nicole Kang Ahn’s three illustrations take us through the intimate and communal acts of remembrance, solidarity, and joy. Natalie Bui’s two pieces visualize both the strength and softness of healing and community care and Aanika Eragam, the 2021 Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate’s poem, “Resurfacing” explores themes of rage, grief, memory, and reemergence.

The exhibit’s final piece, Wish Tree, was co-created by community members who attended the Day of Remembrance. Each leaf features words of encouragement, hope, and care offered for our collective future.

Nicole Kang Ahn (b. 1988)
Remembrance, 2022
Digital print on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

Remembrance is based on a photo taken by the artist during a visit to the makeshift memorial at Gold Spa in the days following the shooting. It captures a moment of quiet reflection – a young girl and her grandmother lean on each other for support, surrounded by flowers and handwritten dedications. It is a reminder that while our wounds are intergenerational, so too are the ways we show caring and healing. 

Nicole Kang Ahn (b. 1988) is a painter, illustrator, and muralist from Peachtree Corners, Georgia. Her art means to slow down time and capture mundane moments, savoring each feeling and memory. Her three pieces included in this collection seek to tell a story that remembers the victims, honors their lives, and conveys a message of hope.

Image Description: This artwork is about remembrance. This is an illustration of the Gold Spa store front where an altar of community notes and flowers are sprawled across the front of the spa and an elder with short dark hair, a brown long sleeve shirt, and brown bag is kneeling and embracing a young child with brown shoulder-length hair, wearing a purple long sleeve shirt looking towards the altar. The Gold Spa was the site of one of the shootings that took place on March 16, 2021.

Natalie Bui (b. 1992)
Community Care, 2022
Digital print on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

In Vietnamese, the expression “chia buồn” is used to express condolences. “Chia buồn” literally translates to “divide sadness.” The expression captures the act of dividing grief – of cutting it into small, little, pieces to split among each other so that each of us individually carries a much lighter load. Community Care shows four figures locked in a comforting embrace. Their limbs are entangled and each person leans on the collective, both resting upon and supporting those around them. 

Community care requires us to harness our power, privilege, and empathy to uplift the people who are both in and out of the reach of our embrace. In the wake of the anniversary, this piece inspires us to recommit to expanding and deepening our community of care for all, beginning in Atlanta and spreading throughout the country and the world.

Natalie Bui (b. 1992) is a Vietnamese American digital illustrator and co-Founder of SHIFT – a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy. Her work centers on self and community empowerment and emphasizes collective liberation across communities.

Image Description: The theme of this artwork is community care with four women embracing one another and the words “CAN I HOLD YOU?” below the image. The women appear with different hair styles in different shades of purple and different shades of orange, pink and red on their skin. There are shades of purple and blue leaves coming out from behind the two women at the end of each embrace and shades of orange, pink, purple and magenta flowers on the women’s skin. The backdrop of this image shows a gradient of orange and pink flowers.

Nicole Kang Ahn (b. 1988)
Solidarity, 2022
Digital print on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

In this illustration, a diverse group of people of all races, genders, ages, and dis/abilities is featured in the foreground. They are holding boldly colored signs that call attention to a range of social and political issues that are often framed as separate, but are actually deeply intertwined. The shadowed figures behind them gesture to the powerful histories of resistance and community organizing that came before them. As we mark the anniversary of the Atlanta shooting, this piece reminds us that this tragedy is steeped in layers of oppression and interconnected histories of systemic violence. As such, it is a call to action to come together for a more powerful response rooted in love and solidarity.

Image Description: This image is all about racial solidarity with a diverse group of people of all races, genders, ages, and dis/abilities holding signs that read “YOUR ASIAN WASN’T QUIET; NO MUSLIM BAN EVER; WORKERS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS; I CAN’T BREATHE; THE FUTURE IS NON BINARY; PROTECT OUR ELDERS; HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT; ABOLISH ICE; BLACK LIVES MATTER; Stand Up Speak Up; NOT ONE MORE; Smash the Hierarchy; My body, My choice; BUILD COMMUNITIES NOT CAGES.” The people holding up signs appear centered on the image with shades of purple shadows behind them.

Nicole Kang Ahn (b. 1988)
Joy, 2022
Digital print on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

In a reinterpretation of Norman Rockwell’s iconic Thanksgiving scene depicted in his painting, Freedom from Want (1943), Kang’s Joy challenges viewers to see a tablescape of dumplings, baos, steamed fish, and shrimp surrounded by an Asian American family as quintessential Americana. For the artist, joy emerges from the feelings of safety, comfort, and belonging that come when family and chosen family gather. In our most trying moments, leaning into love and culture allows us to celebrate who we are today and the hope we have for the future.

Image Description: This artwork represents joy, with a red table filled with Asian foods like dumplings, baos, poached fish, shrimp, tofu, greens, a cake with multi colored candles, white tea pot, tea cups, plates and black chopsticks and a family of eight and dog surrounding the table of food. At the center of the image is an elderly couple, one man with short gray hair, glasses, blue buttoned down shirt and light gray vest standing behind an elderly woman with short hair. She is wearing a mustard yellow sweater and is holding the candle. Next to the elderly couple are two other couples. To the left of the elderly couple is a pregnant couple, the woman with shoulder length hair is wearing a dark mustard colored shirt and holding her belly and the man is wearing a dark blue collared shirt and glasses. A child wearing glasses, a birthday hat and blue shirt is standing with his hands on the red table, looking directly at the elderly woman and cake. To the right of the elderly couple is another couple. The woman is looking ahead with long dark hair and wearing a purple and white striped shirt. She is holding on to the elderly woman’s arm. The man is also looking ahead. He has short dark hair, is smiling, and is wearing a blue shirt. A little girl with dark pigtail buns on her head, wearing a purple shirt, has an excited expression while looking directly at the cake.

Natalie Bui (b. 1992)
Healing, 2022
Digital print on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

According to Bui, conceptualizing her illustrations was a form of healing that centered around showing “our community as is and how they recover.” In Healing, a woman sits in profile in a bed of flowers, adorned in vines. She extends her palm into a universe that pulses with vibrant flowers and layered organic forms in various purple hues. The quote written across her arm and thigh from Ocean Vuong’s poetic novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, describes the beauty and sweetness that remains in the wake of violence. Like her body which simultaneously rests on the earth and reaches into the heavens, this quote helps us to thread the interconnected worlds of pain and healing.

Image Description: This artwork represents healing, showing a curvy brown woman with long dark brown wavy hair outlined in thin light peach colored lines. The woman is reaching up and her body is covered in light purple hand-drawn leaves, flowers and words on her right arm that read “LET NO ONE MISTAKE US FOR THE FRUIT OF VIOLENCE...” and on her thigh, words that read “BUT THAT VIOLENCE, HAVING PASSED THROUGH THE FRUIT, HAS FAILED TO SPOIL IT. - Ocean Vuong.” Behind the woman is a background filled with orange and blue green flowers, stars, and clouds against different shades of purple.

Resurfacing

Here we are. At the crater they left behind.
I’m asking you to look around. Trace the crags
in the earth. Fist the debris in your pockets.
This country promised a shooting star
but granted a shooter. Scream at the sky
that offers no answers. Scream at the ocean
that said they could stop swimming
if only they reached
the shore.

Know that the aftershocks of this quake
will ripple. The family portrait on the living
room wall will shake. When it does, let yourself go
unsteady. Hold your grief like a lover,
coiled in unerring understanding.
There is no right way to miss your mother,
your daughter, your sister, your wife.
You can remember them in
all of their shades: the way
they looked in the sun &
the storm.

And when the tides of this pain recede,
though they will surge again, take the brief
reprieve to remember those hazy festival
mornings when you clasped each other’s
hands, when you lit a lantern together,
the glow reflected within your eyes.
Recall that kindling like muscle
memory, how you made your home
a hearth. Now, strike a match in this
basin and watch it
transform.

Here we are. At the crater they left behind.
I’m asking you to grab a hose and fill
this emptiness till it overflows. Call this wound
a well. Let it be a place of growth.
Plant daffodils at the pond’s edge.
Teach children to make paper boats.
These women as vital as water.
Let their memory keep you
afloat.

Aanika Eragam (b. 2004) is from Milton, GA and is the 2021 Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate. She draws her inspiration from her family, cultural heritage, and experiences of girlhood. “Resurfacing,” written for the victims of the Atlanta spa shooting, moves us through memories of sorrow, rage, grief, and tenderness. Likening these women to water, Eragam helps us imagine their memory as baptismal – a calling for reemergence and renewal. 

Day of Remembrance Attendees 
Wish Tree, 2022
Installation 

Wish Trees are a tradition across continents. In the 17th century, people in Scotland made wishes and hammered coins into tree trunks as a token of gratitude. In Japan, during Tanabata – the star festival – people write wishes on small strips of paper and hang them on bamboo branches. In Lam Tsuen, a village near Hong Kong’s northern border, people celebrate the Lunar New Year by writing wishes on incense paper that they tie to oranges and then hurl into trees.

At the Day of Remembrance event held on March 12, 2022, community members wrote words of remembrance and care and strung them together as a testament to our collective hope for the future.