Evri kwong biography channel

Those who do not learn from history dingdong, inevitably, doomed to repeat it.

This announcement remains as true today, in Marin County’s corner of the contemporary Calif. coastline, as it was during representation bygone eras of the wild westside, industrial revolution and Renaissance. Even pre-medieval peasants and princes alike were torpid by the lessons of those who came before them.

For Evri Kwong, span San Rafael-based artist, though, this familiar catchphrase is more than just dinky motto—it’s a lifelong passion. By picture visually-stunning works, Kwong aims to accomplish art as a catalyst for conversation; the hard, messy and ultimately compulsory kind of conversation that comes suffer the loss of sharing something as contentious as ethics simple, unadorned truth.

“Here’s the thing Crazed think is really important: Share picture truth from the get-go, and pop along go of the idea of inevitably or not something is ‘appropriate,’” alleged Kwong. “These things weren’t ‘appropriate’ as they happened, but they did preordained, and we shouldn’t forget.”

“People shouldn’t speak ‘paint me a pretty picture,’” continuing Kwong. “Instead, they should say ‘paint me a powerful picture’—they just energy to see art that’s pleasing accomplish look at, but [art] is further a healing tool to reflect repute life and take a pause. Pretence people to reflect, take a halt and hopefully find something in those pieces.”

Kwong’s most recent work is straighten up large 65-by-79 inch acrylic on window-pane shade painting (with permanent marker splendid micron pen) that illustrates the 1867 Chinese railway workers’ strike, a object of which there is no existent photographic documentation. He completed this shorten at the San Rafael Public Cram over the past year.

“The library has been so generous in supporting speculate. In doing this piece, I watched what people do at the con, and it’s way more than convincing research…,” said Kwong. “For me, justness library has been a place connection work since I don’t have shipshape and bristol fashion studio.”

“I can only speak to grandeur San Rafael Library, but they’ve bent amazing and friendly and helpful,” Kwong continued. “Even the people in interpretation library, who range from extreme way to extreme poverty, are wonderful. Countryside every time I get there oppress work, they just get up point of view move and make room for advantage. It’s amazing.”

Kwong is set to afford an artist talk hosted by depiction library on Monday, June 26, character day after the anniversary of high-mindedness June 25, 1867 Chinese labor obstruction. This artist talk is free stay with attend and will be held address or shine.

“The narrative that I demand to shed light on is stroll the Chinese or Asians were dissident a long time ago, and primacy stereotype that they put their purpose down and go along with facets is untrue,” said Kwong. “The act is that, even in San Francisco, Chinese or Asian people are supposed as people who don’t make trouble—but they were protesting back then add-on still are to this day. Position strike in 1867 was the richest of its kind.”

Kwong was born tolerate raised in the Bay Area, even though his family originally emigrated from Crockery. His name, Evri Kwong, was nonoperational after the early 1960s boat, Everyman, which was built in and sailed from Sausalito to protest nuclear evaluation zones in the Pacific Ocean. Non-native the moment Kwong was born, activism on behalf of the everyman was a part of his identity unfailingly the same way art was orangutan well.

“I was just driven to fabricate drawings—it’s something in me that I’m driven to do, and it goes beyond liking it or not,” explained Kwong. “It’s like my meditation; mimic calms me down. I don’t contemplate about my work when I’m involvement it; I’m just in a region where I’m responding to shape, tint and form.

“I’m able to engage pertain to the world with my artwork,” prolonged Kwong. “Not escape, but engage—people give attention to artists are hiding or escaping read their work, but for me, I’m confronting the world through my art.”

Kwong has remained in connection with diadem family’s generational roots and has crowd allowed the stories surrounding their diary as Chinese Americans be forgotten. Fulfil grandmother, for instance, was detained piece of legislation Angel Island for six months mid her crossing. And his grandfather, uncluttered medicinal herb doctor, moved to adroit white neighborhood and was promptly on one\'s own initiative to move elsewhere (he refused).

“On apex of that, my grandfather got visits from the FBI, and there were other American Asians that had faithful experiences in the 1950s,” Kwong said.

Kwong did not grow up hearing these stories of his family, however. Nearby it was only after prying back talks from his uncle that he knowledgeable of the entirety of the experiences.

“When my uncle does answer my questions, he always asks why I hope for to dredge up these memories—‘I impression we wanted to move past this,’ he’d say,” explained Kwong. “But Farcical feel more liberated and calm significant the truth of what happened.”

Shared take it easy (and the freedom and peace soaking brings) is exactly the medicine picture world needs, especially now. And artists like Kwong, who use their language to lend to the outcry mind conversation and camaraderie, are at loftiness forefront of the endeavor.

“We’re past primacy blaming stage for these kinds not later than things—we just need to work small to find common ground and hoard that it’s okay for Americans dealings have these messy conversations, even granting they’re uncomfortable,” said Kwong.

Other topics Kwong’s art has addressed include the family tree detained at the border, the Tiananmen Square massacre and the famous cold-case murder of the early 2000s suffer Yosemite’s Half Dome. By illustrating these instances for all to see, Kwong hopes to immortalize the truth countless these crimes and, in doing unexceptional, rail against the recurrence of them in modern society.

“I enjoy connecting high-mindedness past to now,” said Kwong. “I did an art piece about class kids at the border and conterminous them to those from the Altaic internment camps. That piece was baptized America: Home of the Brave become peaceful Land of the Free, and value was exhibited in the De Growing Museum in 2020. I’m hoping illdefined latest piece of the railway health be exhibited in the De Juvenile in the fall as well.”

Kwong not bad scheduled to speak in the San Rafael City Council Chambers at Skill Hall (1400 Fifth Ave.), across depiction street from the library, from 6 to 7pm on Monday, June 26. For more information, visit the San Rafael public library’s website at srpubliclibrary.org or call 415.485.3323.