The Celestials examines the overlooked history of early Chinese immigrants to the United States through an unlikely point of entry: their nineteenth-century nickname, “the Celestials.” The term appears repeatedly in newspapers, government reports, and accounts of anti-Chinese violence, including the 1885 massacre of Chinese coal miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Both poetic and estranging, the word casts these migrants as distant and abstract—figures imagined more than understood. 

Developed through months of archival and on-site research, The Celestials takes the form of a multimedia installation combining video, printed images, texts, and diagrams. The project comprises three sections: Ten Thousand Invaders, Constructed Landscape, and Death · Star.

Newspaper reproductions, hand-drawn graphs, archival image collages, presentation boards, and single-channel video

The Celestials (2025-26)