With Greenway Exhibit at Chin Park, Cambodian-American Artist Humanizes Refugee Experience

At a time when immigrants and refugees in the U.S. are increasingly coming under threat of detention, deportation and having their legal status swiped away, a public art installation in Boston will seek to humanize refugee life — particularly of those in the Cambodian diaspora.

With the “Year of the Snake” installation, Cambodian American artist Misa Chhan is showing printed flags and other works at the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy’s Chin Park until October. The Los Angeles-based artist’s work is made up of two parts, one of fabric flags and another of aluminum prints with photo-collages that honor the legacy and resilience of Cambodian diaspora, and Chhan’s own family.

During the genocidal reign of the communist Khmer Rouge — led by the infamous dictator Pol Pot — in the 1970s, around a million people died under harsh treatment and government repression in Cambodia. Another million people escaped to other countries, according to the Asia Society. It’s estimated 130,000 found refuge in the United States.

For Chhan’s installation, the artist took curtains, clay, doilies, and old family photo albums and belongings such as furniture, to create images of one familiar piece of the diaspora, according to a press statement from the Greenway Conservancy. To create the printed flags, Chhan, who could not be reached for this story, used indigo dyeing and cyanotype. The installation explores how refugee families create their new sense of home when moving from one country to another.

Chhan’s own father, a craftsman, was part of the inspiration for the works, and so was Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower. Some of the imagery represents the lives of Chhan’s parents, who fled Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime. Other flags depict a spider web, which Chhan sees as a symbol of “strength, community, and connection.”

Chhan also considers “earth as a living entity rather than a territory to be owned.”

“Utilizing ancient craft methods helps to establish links between past and present practitioners, allowing me to participate in premodern processes connected to human evolution,” said Chhan in a statement. “This practice feels revolutionary in a society that glorifies hyperconsumption and disposability.”

Chhan’s work is being displayed in Boston at a “critical moment,” said Audrey Lopez, The Greenway Conservancy’s director and curator of public art, in a statement, “when immigrant communities across the country are facing heightened surveillance, vilification, persecution, and violence. Chhan’s artwork rehumanizes diasporic experiences by offering tender reminders of the quiet, everyday moments, hopes, dreams, challenges, and successes of families who come to the U.S., and the resilience created in community along the way.”

For more information go to https://www.rosekennedygreenway.org/