Ting Ying Han

Hidden in Plain Sight, 2022

This history of the city intrigues me, as does how urbanization transforms the social fabric and shapes our ideas of community identities. Street names are like the pages of a history book, rich with color and tales. The names of the streets serve as markers for the passage of time, events, and individuals.

I came upon the bilingual street signs in San Francisco's Chinatown while doing research about community displacement. These signs stand as a formal tribute, recognizing the Asian-American community's invaluable contributions to the city's rich history and the neighborhood's vibrant cultural fabric. Regrettably, this unique urban gem is slowly fading away. In an effort to pay homage to the neighborhood's cultural identity and poetically convey the sense of displacement, I decided to flip the English street names while printing the text with Chinese cooking sauces to celebrate the resilience of cultural heritage and honor the colorful narratives woven into our city streets.