This Master’s Thesis Project reimagines the lost history of Chinese migrant workers who built the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad by revisiting digital and traditional archives and presenting them in new visual artistic forms. My research aims to ask questions, initiate a dialogue, acknowledge the absence, and give form to the invisible. Through hand-made ink drawings, I traced the arduous and lonely pathway of the Chinese Railroad Workers’ journey; through digital practices, I elaborated these works into series of multiple artworks; and through generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, I learned that we should never forget the previous generation who laid the foundation for our present life. This process deepened my connection to these Chinese workers’ inner worlds and taught me the power of art for healing, reflection, and remembrance.
The physical installation of Haoqing Yu's The East and West is on display on the 3rd floor of the Car Barn in the hall adjacent to the Communications, Culture, and Technology Department. The exhibition measures roughly 5 feet tall x 11 feet wide.
The East and the West exhibition is one of the signature pieces of Haoqing's thesis project The Hardships and Untold Stories of the Invisible Chinese Migrant Workers: Artistic Intervention on the History of the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad, which contains over 50 distinct hand-made and digital artworks (View Website and 3d virtual exhibition/Guided Tour).