Join artist and writer Angela Chen for a participatory lecture-performance and reading of her debut text-image book After School《課後》.
After School《課後》brings together autobiography, photographs, collage, and archival documents to unpack the culture of buxiban (after school tutoring centers) in predominantly East Asian communities in the San Gabriel Valley, CA. It tells the story of her family’s struggle to run Futurelink, a buxiban business, against the historical backdrop of anti-Asian discrimination and considers the after school as a paradoxical space of discipline and care, assimilation and cultural preservation, competition and community.
Attendees will receive a free copy of Chen’s offshoot publication, the After School Workbook, to fill out and take home.
Angela Chen is a Taiwanese American artist, writer, and educator from the ethnoburbs of the San Gabriel Valley, CA. Her work explores the immigrant experience and uses assemblage as a metaphor for diasporic identity. Chen received her MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan and previously taught at Rice University and New York University.