Mimian Hsu Chen
Colonia China
2014
Mimian Hsu, Colonia China, 2014.
In Mimian Hsu Chen’s work, Colonia China the artist documents a Chinese cemetery of Costa Rica’s Limón Province, along the country’s Caribbean coast. Serving as the final resting place for Chinese migrants who came to Coast Rica during the late nineteenth century as indentured laborers working to construct the Transatlantic Railroad, the Colonia China speaks to a long but divided history. Hsu’s photographs of the burial ground also echo her interest in typography, with blocky black lettering and painted Chinese characters marking the cemetery as a space belonging to two different worlds.
Costa Rica-based artist Mimian Hsu works with photography, documents, typography, and objects to construct site-specific installations, performances, and projects that explore intersecting cultural identities. As the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who grew up in Latin America, Hsu has long been interested in hybridized identities and histories. Drawing on her own autobiography and the historical shifts and migrations between Asia and Latin America, Hsu draws upon photographs, archives, architectures, and typography to create site-specific interventions, installations, and performances that speak to this duality of culture, assimilation, and erasure.