Matthew Chan

Los Angeles based artist

I am an artist who finds interest in the identity histories of place, whether it be the individuals or things residing and moving through a space, existing within the margins. My interest in these explorations comes from wanting to relate my inherent familial Chinese culture and my immediate American landscape. My family immigrated to the United States in 1979 and I was the only child of my siblings born in the US. I was raised in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980’s and 1990’s. My father worked as a journeyman cook in restaurants and my mother worked sewing clothes in garment factories. The neighborhoods we lived in were predominantly African American and Latino and I was the only Chinese person in my school and neighborhood.  I was a minority among minorities. As children and onto adulthood, we are taught to notice cultural signifiers and we place labels onto each other. But these differences that often represent otherness, are also able to reveal our similarities to each other. I freely use the mediums of photography, video, performance and installation to help reveal this interconnectedness regardless of race, culture, or socio-economics. I attempt to make images that can reference the viewers own memory and history. In photographing a loquat tree, I am considering a personal memory that is associated with it, a referent to that thing stimulating a dialogue with the audience.