May 1
Convocation: Wing Young Huie
Wing Young Huie is a celebrated photographer who has captured the complex cultural realities of American society. His photographs have been shown in international museums, but his best known works — Lake Street USA and the University Avenue Project — were public art projects that transformed Minneapolis and St. Paul thoroughfares into six-mile photo galleries, reflecting the everyday lives of thousands of their citizens.
Wing uses photography as a societal mirror and window, seeking to reveal not only what is hidden, but also what is plainly visible and seldom noticed, providing a collective portrait of the “them” who are really “us.” While his projects explore a myriad of social issues, his current work explores Chinese-ness — the meanings of identity and the nature of belonging.
As the youngest of six children and the only one in his family not born in China, he explores the questions of “So what am I? How does my Chinese-ness collide with my Minnesota-ness and my American-ness? And who gets to define those abstract hyphenated nouns?”