Artist Voices: Reflections from Che Yeh on Interstitial Lives

In the Artists Voices series, NEFA connects with grantees to learn more about the impact of the grant on their work. Che Yeh received a Public Art for Spatial Justice Grant in 2023 which supported Interstitial Lives - a socially engaged project that speculates on the inter-species intimacy between Ailanthus Altissima trees and East Asian immigrants. In this blog, Yeh shares the origin of his connection to the Ailanthus Altissima tree and how his artistic journey and the Interstitial Lives project journey is reflected back through this connection to the tree.

Public Art for Spatial Justice aims to support public artmaking that helps us see, feel, experience and imagine spatial justice now, while we are still on this journey towards realizing more just futures for our public spaces and public culture.

everything between me and you 

It all started with a tree called Ailanthus altissima. The tree that I grew up surrounded by. I vividly remember smelling them while walking home from middle school in the late summer with friends. As teenage boys, we would always joke about the way they smelled like semen and laugh as if we owned the whole street. In hindsight, laughing is how we deal with the desire we are not able to comfortably confront and comprehend. The tree faded from my life after I reached my late teens. In school, we were only taught to focus on knowledge enshrined in textbooks and things with meaningful existences. Trees that grow everywhere certainly escape that realm. It wasn’t until I moved to Boston for graduate school that I noticed them again, scattered among high-rises and along I-95. As I regularly encountered them, their growing patterns became apparent to me -- they usually appear in interstitial spaces: along railroad tracks, embankments, bridges and overpasses, or in sidewalk cracks and along boundary fences between properties. Oftentimes, they don’t exist singularly, they aggregate in clumps with no other plants growing around them. This is resulted from their root sprouting and the allelopathic chemical ailanthone their roots produce. Their messy, out-of-place appearance in Boston’s organized and tidy urban landscape reminded me of myself.

During that time, I was finishing my thesis, unraveling how Western empires' desire, fear, curiosity, and anxiety toward the "Orient" fueled cross-continental trade of humans, plants, and goods. In the 18th century. Europeans had an insatiable itch for Chinese goods—porcelain, silk, spices, and opium. The imagined Orient landscape was also transformed into Chinoiserie decorative motifs seen in fabric, dishware, furniture, and garden designs. To recreate the Oriental landscapes, property owners sent seed seekers to collect prized species from Asia, including Ailanthus altissima. Initially hailed by its aficionados for its lush foliage, its reputation declined as it took roots beyond private estates, becoming an invasive species in urban areas of most Western countries.

Their experiences resemble the common Mandarin translation for diaspora (離散), literally stands for "leave and disperse." Yet, their biological nature brings them back together in clumps within modern cities, as unruly species whose roots invade sewers and damage infrastructure. The thread that connects plant lives with immigrants’ experiences draws my interests and inspires me to create works around it.

I was very excited to receive the PASJ grant from NEFA last year. NEFA is so generous in giving me plentiful resources and time. With that, I was able to dig deeper into the subject and really consider how my practice speaks to a particular site. My initial excitement at receiving the grant was soon overtaken by anxiety. I'm unsure if it's due to my imposter syndrome or the feeling that bringing social justice through art might be too ambitious. While I recognize that public art is effective in providing a metaphorical space where political ideas such as democracy and justice, or new emancipatory social relations can be presented and promoted in an open context, my skepticism arises from its performativity and the often- tenuous linkage between the work and actual societal impact.

Despite not knowing exactly what to do, I’m certain about what I don’t want: I don’t want to create anything singular, stand-alone, durable, big, or authoritarian. Instead, I want to focus on temporary works within my immediate surroundings and redistribute the funding to people I care about. This might be my most naive approach to the grand idea of public art. I’ve learned it from the way Ailanthus altissima adapts their unforeseeable moves—by re-gathering, invading, and taking up space.

With these ideas in mind, I proposed to work in Boston’s Chinatown, a place I have spent much of my time and deeply valued. While I appreciate the community and their unique lives, working there presents challenges for me. Historically, Chinatowns in most U.S. cities were created as survival tools, defending against racial exclusion and protecting land ownership. Even today, they are still portrayed through a singular and predominant cultural lens for a diverse group of visitors to swallow. I struggle with creating work around a marginalized group without falling into clichés of visibility and representation. However, after engaging with the community, I realized the complexities of this neighborhood go beyond my preconception of it as a cultural signification; they encompass generations of dreams, hopes, losses, and resistance. These are the stories abandoned by modern life, cracks needing to be filled, and I believe my project has a small interstitial space within them.

In the early stages of developing the project, the team at NEFA offered me a lot of guidance. They are tremendously supportive in creating a platform for communication. Whenever something unexpected happened or I was simply panicking, I was always able to find someone to meet and brainstorm with. Two of the incredible people from NEFA — Kim Szeto and Jessica Wong Camhi —  are very close to the communities and organizers in Chinatown. Thanks to them, I was able to connect with the locals there and learn more about the neighborhood. Also, many past PASJ grantees have histories of working in Chinatown, so being a PASJ grantee feels like joining the tribe.

For those unfamiliar with Boston's Chinatown, it is a neighborhood tucked into downtown Boston. Over the past fifty years, it has been shrinking, squeezed by highways on two sides and gradually overtaken by two medical institutions. New developers have eyed this area with interest under the guise of urban renewal, leading to the demolition and reconstruction of buildings and the addition of highway ramps. Consequently, few plants can survive here, and Chinatown has become one of the least green neighborhoods in Boston. Despite this, Ailanthus altissima have begun to thrive, growing vigorously amidst the changes. These trees serve as silent witnesses to the neighborhood's transformation and act as repositories of cultural memory. To me, this embodies the essence of a monument.

I began to organize the project around the idea: what if the ailanthus trees are living monuments and the project is to inherit the habits of citizens gathering around the monuments. In many places, a monument is a park or a plaza where various self-organized civil activities are held in that space. By gathering, citizens re-activate rather than commemorate the foreclosed past. To play more with the idea, I created a portable monument for the Ailanthus altissima: a wheeled table resembling outdoor training gears, equipped with four bass-heavy bombastic speakers under its seats. This monument also functions as an instrument. Passersby are invited to sit on the seats and use the massage sticks on the sides of the table to activate the speakers, producing unique remixes for each other and the public. The sounds to be selected from are composed of local aunties and uncles’ favorite Cantonese and Mandarin pop hits, recordings of city soundscapes, conversations, and electronic signals collected from ailanthus trees using a psychogalvanometer. On top of the table, lays research materials I collected in relation to the past and present of the ailanthus tree and the neighborhood.

Around the table, events and workshops are organized, including public massages, plant walk tours, group workout, and lecture conversations. These events are centered around the theme of healing—both externally and internally, metaphorically and literally. For me, healing occurs when we let go of our rigid boundaries, open the walls we build around ourselves and gather. Through conversations happened during the project. I realized that our individual pasts are not impenetrable just like our bodies; they are porous and are interconnected with each other’s, both human and non-human. We heal ourselves by granting justice and autonomy to each other. We all have the capability to do so. Similarly, the process of organizing the project with close friends and admired minds is also a healing process for me. It was fulfilling to know that kindred spirits existed and we can come together to create experiences for and with each other.

We are living in a time, where remixes of songs get more plays and are wilder, than the original one. Music doesn’t end as a final track but can be co-created and stays alive infinitely as versions, edits, mixes, and appears on various DJ sets. Originality and authenticity are simply myths. Ideas are sparkled by throwing and catching like improvisation in Jazz. As Legacy Russell once noted, “art and creativity are like writing in footnotes; we reference all different points that made us who we are, or who made the work be what it is. Because it does take a village.” The value in public art lies in that village relation: the conversations and negotiations that occur before and during the project.

Finally, it takes a while for me to realize artists are not problem solvers but problem itself. I put too much energy and attention into locating problems and trying to fix them previously. Despite facing many difficulties in this project, I now see that obstructing and agitating the system—by simply being fully myself, like Ailanthus altissima, is also valid. This mentality, I believe, is essential for artists working in public spaces and should be planted.