Echoes of Passage

Jia Jia, Melanie Tsang

January 4 - 26, 2025

Echoes of Passage brings together the works of two artists, both born and raised in China, who use their respective mediums to explore the complex, often disjointed experiences of immigration and its profound impact on identity, materiality, and artistic expression. Through installations that reflect personal journeys, Jia and Melanie navigate the intersections of displacement, adaptation, and belonging, offering viewers an intimate glimpse into their reflections on the immigrant experience.

Jia’s work reveals a fragmented, tactile exploration of the immigrant body and mind, shaped by cultural dislocation and adaptation. Utilizing undyed leather scraps, various types of clay, and surgical equipment, her installation creates a visceral narrative of separation, reconstruction, and resilience. At the heart of her work is a stitched patchwork of leather scraps, symbolizing a body piecing itself back together in a search for stability and belonging. Adjacent to this central piece, an opening filled with a mixture of clay and torn pages from the Oxford English Dictionary—interspersed with surgical scissors—highlights the challenges of linguistic adaptation and cultural negotiation. Clay, a malleable and transformative material, becomes a metaphor for human adaptability, while the torn dictionary pages signify the struggle to assimilate within a new linguistic and cultural framework. Through the surgical implements, Jia draws parallels between her rushed problem-solving as an immigrant and the swift, invasive procedures of surgery. This contrasts with her preference for holistic healing, akin to traditional Chinese medicine, where balance and interconnectedness are emphasized. Twisted clay forms resembling digestive organs further deepen this dialogue, symbolizing the emotional and bodily transformations inherent to immigration.

In Melanie’s installation Homeland’ | Class of Admission, the personal becomes poetic, as she reflects on a decade-long journey of studying, working, and living in the United States. Using 25 pages of text from her USCIS immigration documents, Melanie prints words onto transparent film and submerges them in water-filled stainless steel trays. As air bubbles form and obscure the text over time, the work speaks to the impermanence and fluidity of memory and identity. Water—a symbol of purity, time, and transience—transforms the legal language into a dynamic, reflective medium, while the surgical tone of the trays echoes themes of scrutiny and vulnerability. Concrete bricks support each tray, symbolizing the slow, deliberate construction of a life away from home, built step by step. By arranging these elements on the floor, Melanie invites viewers to bend down, confronting the text and its watery reflections in a humble, intimate act of engagement. This posture mirrors the artist’s own journey—one marked by resilience and a continual negotiation of identity within shifting cultural landscapes.

Together, Jia and Melanie’s works navigate the interplay between physicality and ephemerality, creating a shared space to reflect on the deeply personal yet universally resonant experience of immigration. Through their distinct yet complementary approaches, they invite audiences to contemplate how material and memory intersect in the search for belonging.

Artist Biographies:

Jia Jia is an interdisciplinary artist based in Seattle. Through the exploration of different medias, her work demonstrates how individuals continuously redefine their identity and value in a world shaped by globalization and migration under the pressure of societal norms. Jia Jia received an MFA in 3D4M from the University of Washington (2021) and a BFA in Ceramics and Product Design from China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2016). Her work has been exhibited at venues including SOIL, Root Division, 4C Gallery, Field Projects Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, and Henry Art Gallery. Her work has been featured in publications such as ArtConnect, ArtMaze Magazine, and The Seattle Times. She also has been artist in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Chautauqua Institution, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is also a member of SOIL Gallery in Seattle.

jiajiajj.com

@jiaj.i.a

Melanie Tsang is a writer and conceptual artist whose work spans playwriting, film writing, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and installations. Her writing delves into a range of social issues that deeply resonate with her, including immigration, diaspora, gender violence, and political oppression. One of her notable works, Monologues of n Women, is a theater piece that blends poetry, music, dance, and drama to confront themes of gender violence and oppression; it premiered in Seattle in 2022. Her poetry collection, Confrontation by Blood, was exhibited at the Rehearsal Art Book Fair in New York in 2023. Beyond writing, she found another voice in creating installations that convey the subtle, personal, and unspeakable. Her works have been exhibited at the Holy Art gallery in London and the ITSLIQUID Group in Venice in 2024. Recognized for her contributions to the arts, Melanie Tsang received a grant from the 2024 Cultural Producers Recovery Fund in Washington state.

melanietsang.com

@melaniets.art