Zhuyan Ye
& Robert Healy Elementary
Zhuyan Ye & Robert Healy Elementary

Project Overview

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  • Artist — Zhuyan Ye

  • School — Robert Healy Elementary School

  • Neighborhood — Bridgeport

I was born in China in 1996 and grew up in an elite, exam-oriented education system as an only-child kid in my family. My parents are the first generation to benefit from the resumption of the college entrance examination after the cultural revolution. I was experiencing moving to a big city for better education when I was in middle high school. So do many of my friends. In some way, I assume that most of the parents who choose to immigrate to the US also pursue a better education for their next generation at a high price. 

 

I changed my mind and stopped making assumptions when I first visited Flushing in 2019. I saw immigrants of all classes. The staff in the grocery store in Chicago Chinatown told me that he couldn’t make his life in the highly competitive environment in China so he chose to migrate to the states. How is the life of his kids? How is the education their kids receive? I am curious. 

 

I went to Haines Elementary School and Robert Healy Elementary School as they either have the most Asian American students or the highest percentage of Asian American students. I am thinking of the space of/around the school, the multilingual environment as well as the comparison with our own growth and education experience. I want to start from my previous project about the relationship between the body and the space with the students and staff there as a beginning of this fieldwork. After spending months of time with them, I want to make a video installation documenting the education and personal stories there. I also know first and second generation Asian American who have a totally different education experience with the students in these two schools but also in CPS. I want to connect their stories and mine in the concept of Auto-ethnography. 

 

I had experience working on migration and geopolitics in the media of photography, performance and writing. Working with CPS Lives probably would also become an opportunity for me to get deeper into the Asian American community in Chicago as well as the diversity scenarios in Chicago public education. 

Meet the Artist

Zhuyan Ye

Zhuyan Ye, Chicago Public Schools, CPS Lives, SAIC, Chicago Artist

Zhuyan Ye (b. 1996) born in Zhejiang, China and live between China, Taiwan and Chicago. Walking around the marginal spaces of these different cities, I try to test the relationship between the body and the space. I am drawn to people’s agency facing their gentrified personal spaces. In this practice, Language and conversation exist in the form of oral history to negotiate with the grand narrative.

I witness the movement from everything and perform like an animal while accepting illness and death numbly and discipline them into writing and pictorial memory. In the forms of installation, performance and autoethnography documentary, I am currently working on an on-going project “chair practice”. I received a Master of Fine Arts in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. 

More from this Artist

Zhuyan Ye (b. 1996) born in Zhejiang, China and live between China, Taiwan and Chicago. Walking around the marginal spaces of these different cities, I try to test the relationship between the body and the space. I am drawn to people’s agency facing their gentrified personal spaces. In this practice, Language and conversation exist in the form of oral history to negotiate with the grand narrative.

I witness the movement from everything and perform like an animal while accepting illness and death numbly and discipline them into writing and pictorial memory. In the forms of installation, performance and autoethnography documentary, I am currently working on an on-going project “chair practice”. I received a Master of Fine Arts in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. 

Zhuyan Ye, Chicago Public Schools, CPS Lives, SAIC, Chicago Artist

Previous Residency

Mariah Karson & Carl Schurz High School

Next Residency

Jess Smoot & Cesar Chavez Elementary School

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