Read this essay in Chinese here.

“Bang, bang, bang!,” a cacophony of locker doors slamming shut always echoes before the class bell rings at Haines Elementary School located in Chicago’s Chinatown. After the kids entered their classrooms, Chang-Ching “Casper” Su, a Taiwanese lens-based multimedia artist, drew my attention to pops of the brilliant colors that enlivened the empty hallway, flanked by rows of dull gray lockers. As we walked closer towards the lockers, we noticed sky blue and canary yellow backpack straps, pink puffer jacket sleeves, and a green hem— caught at the edges, peeking through an ajar door, and draping from the bottom cracks.

Over the past two years, Casper has immersed himself in a residency at Haines Elementary School. Funded by CPSLives, a nonprofit organization that pairs Chicago artists with public schools to create projects that tell the unique stories of each school and its community, Casper created a collection of photographs he titled the day we are all included (2023) that captured the seemingly inconspicuous fragments of personal items the students bring to school and their significance in the everyday lives of a group of bilingual Chinese first graders.

Casper first shared this project with me when we were at his home, making zongzi (rice dumplings) for DuanWu Festival (The Dragon Boat Festival), a traditional Chinese holiday that occurs on May 5th of the Chinese calendar, which corresponds to late May or early June in the Gregorian calendar. While boiling dumplings, praying for good luck, and taking respite from the summer heat, we simmered on ideas of networks, affectivity, in-betweenness, and diaspora.

As we were chatting, Casper reflected on his experience learning and growing with a particular group of bilingual learners for the past two years, “Now, as they are about to become third graders, I’ve witnessed their remarkable growth. They’ve become more fluent and comfortable in their new language, sharing gaming tips and whispering English voice-overs as we watched Chinese cartoons together. Their journey mirrors my own as I navigate the challenges of a new environment and cultural integration.”

This journey is not just the students’ and the artist’s; it is deeply rooted in the history of Haines Elementary School. Once a segregated school for African American students a century ago, it now primarily serves second- and third-generation Chinese immigrants, along with a few Latin and African American students. The school’s commitment to bilingual English-Chinese education, with signs and notices in both Chinese and English, reflects the community’s desire to maintain a connection to its cultural heritage while navigating the challenges of life in America.  

“The vibrant colors in Casper’s photographs break from conventional color connotations. They contrast with the compliant gray-toned lockers, speaking to a nonconformity that seeks its own identity and embodiment.”

This transcultural and diasporic journey was also mine as a young Chinese student, arriving in the United States at the age of 15. Casper’s photographs evoked memories of my high school days in Maryland. Lockers were rather an afterthought for me, not useful nor safe, while dorm rooms were my second home away from home and an escape space in between classes as an international boarding student. For students at Haines Elementary School, these rusted lockers were small, intimate sanctuaries within a public space, bursting with items that carried both functional and emotional significance. They leave their Chinese homes in the morning, enter their bilingual Chinese American school, put away their reflective cultural belongings, and immerse themselves in a globalized learning environment. They experience multiple transformations that define their journey from domestic to public, and from new migrants to conversant residents. Through capturing the edges and corners caught in the opening and closing of lockers, Casper poetically and subtly comments on a state of constant alternations and being caught in between.

After receiving a BA in Political Science at the National Taiwan University, Casper came to pursue a MFA in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021, and has always been interested in exploring identity, power dynamics and the boundaries of freedom that shape contemporary socio-political systems. In his Crayola project (2022), Casper examines Crayola’s “multicultural crayons” collection, first introduced in 1992 and later adapted into the Colors of the World collection, launched in May 2020. Marketed as an effort to foster creativity and inclusivity, these skin-tone-based crayons are derived from three main shades: almond, golden, and rose, with lighter and darker variations in between, aiming to “let children more accurately color themselves.” This overt message prompted Casper to question how society, corporations, and governments preach equality. It inspired him to expand the shades beyond Crayola’s palette, generating an ever-growing treelike network of colors in the form of text.

“Asia is not a geographic area fixed within a rigid system of classification, but rather, as Asians and its diaspora, a self-identified network of connections, affinities, intimacies, and engagements.”

The Day We Are All Included (2023) is also color-coded—Rose Lotion, Supernova, Azure, Rakuta, Midlight Brick, Coral Blossom. What do colors signify? Or shall we say what can colors represent? Dawn Chan, in Addressing People of Purple-hued Skin, quotes comedian Mitch Hedberg: “You know when it comes to racism, people say: ‘I don’t care if they’re black, white, purple, or green.’ Uh, hold on now: purple or green?! You gotta draw the line somewhere! To hell with purple people! Unless they’re suffocating, then help ’em.”¹ In such conversations or tweets, color becomes a symbolic buzzword, often stripped of its specific meaning. Throwing in absurd non-racial colors alongside black and white, like confetti at a party or sprinkles on a cupcake, trivializes the seriousness of racial discussion and candy-coats an overtly inclusive statement that often cares the least about making real change. Yet, the vibrant colors in and color-coded titles of Casper’s photographs are deliberate and heavy-weighted. They contrast with the compliant gray-toned lockers, speaking, with specificity and sincerity, to a nonconformity that seeks its own identity and embodiment.

As Stanley Thangaraj poignantly writes:² 

“Asia confined, bound, and restricted, 

with gatekeepers among the state, the academy, and practitioners 

assembling contours, lines, and colors 

resembling nations, continents, and (political) landscapes 

yet, 

failing to address Asia as ambiguous, ambivalent, political, and mobile.” 

Untethered from the two-dimensional photographic approach, Casper designs these captures into everyday wearable objects like keychains, tote bags, and stuffed toys. Hanging on the students’ backpacks, these colorful keychains become a secret code between Casper and the kids. Indeed, as porous, ambiguous, and multilayered as Casper’s practice, Asia is not a geographic area fixed within a rigid system of classification, but rather, as Asians and its diaspora, a self-identified network of connections, affinities, intimacies, and engagements.

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¹Ho, Christopher K., and Daisy Nam, eds. Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts. Brooklyn, New York: Paper Monument, 2021.

²Thangaraj, Stanley. “‘I Am Asian’: Kurdish Diasporas, Interconnected Racial Geographies, and Asian America.” Journal of Asian American Studies 26, no. 2 (2023): 167–73. https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2023.a901065.

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