iAsian Art MuseumCivic Center, San Francisco
This Asian American Life
Kayan Cheung-Miaw's outdoor mural on the Hyde Street Art Wall sees San Francisco's Chinatown through a child's eyes: noodles, bees, bus drivers and the sound of a gao hu.
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One panel is just a cheek: the chubby cheek of the artist's six-year-old son, Jiakai, whose habit of stopping to watch a bee helped start the mural. Kayan Cheung-Miaw, a comic artist and labor organizer raised in New York's Chinatown, draws San Francisco's Chinatown at a child's height and a child's speed.
The mural runs as a series of comic-style panels along the museum's Hyde Street wall, and you read it like a strip. You get the smell of a bowl of noodle soup, a redwood leaf held in a hand, a wild poppy pushing out of a crack in the sidewalk, a bus driver waving to passengers, and a cook on a break beside a scatter of cigarette butts. "It's not just dragons and lanterns," Cheung-Miaw told Mission Local.
It is outdoors and free, on Hyde Street between McAllister and Grove, so no ticket or opening hours apply. It comes down on 2 November.
Look for
Jiakai's cheek
One panel is filled by the round cheek of the artist's six-year-old son, the child whose way of looking the mural borrows.
The sidewalk poppy
A wild poppy grows out of a crevice in the pavement, the kind of moment Cheung-Miaw says we should pause for.
The cook on a break
A Chinatown restaurant cook takes a breather, cigarette butts on the ground nearby, one of the workers the mural puts at its centre.
The waving bus driver
A bus driver waves hello to passengers, a small everyday exchange given a whole panel.
The bee
A bee, drawn because the artist's son stopped in the street to watch one.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want a gallery show: this is a single outdoor mural on the museum's exterior wall.
With kids
It is drawn from a child's point of view, inspired by the artist's six-year-old, in comic-strip panels. It is free and on the street, so there is no ticket for anyone.
Also at Asian Art Museum
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- This Asian American LifeAsian Art Museum
- GaHee Park: Behind the CurtainGaHee Park; photo Guillaume Ziccarelli; courtesy Perrotin Gallery
- Dread Scott: The Body PoliticDread Scott / YBCA
- Rael San Fratello: Prototypes and ProvocationsRael San Fratello / YBCA
- Asian Art MuseumDale Cruse, CC BY 4.0
- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)JCruzTheTruth / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)Jllm06 / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)Beyond My Ken / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Chinese Historical Society of America MuseumAnna Majkowska / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0