Leland Wong's I-Hotel

Join us for an artist reception and live painting demonstration for Leland Wong’s solo exhibition I Hotel. Curated by Alice Wu, the exhibition features a selection of Wong’s Chinese ink illustrations used in Karen Tei Yamashita's groundbreaking book, I Hotel (2010, Coffee House Press). Having grown up in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Wong witnessed both the heyday and then the injustices surrounding the International Hotel, a low-income single-occupancy residential hotel in San Francisco that housed Filipino & Chinese elderly, immigrant workers, and families.

For his I-Hotel illustrations, Wong used a technique he had never used before—Chinese brush and ink (with a contemporary twist). This technique is now his signature style. Reflecting on this body of work Wong says “It was a crazy and confusing time, and my hope is that people will look at my work and have a better understanding of what happened.”