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ALBUQUERQUE - In honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the City of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division presents My Story Is Golden, a powerful, collaborative video soundscape by artist J P 제피. My Story Is Golden will be on view at Gallery One and the International District Library through June 20.
A public screening of the 20-minute soundscape takes place on May 29 at Gallery One from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The screening will begin at 6, with Q&A to follow.
My Story Is Golden is an experimental artwork that continues to evolve. It includes recordings from a 2023 Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) story-sharing program, and is part of an ongoing community and land-based public art project. The video is a visual companion to a soundscape composed with the voices of 24 APIDA community members in Albuquerque. Together they narrate a communal story of migration, identity, and rooting in place.
“APIDA identities exist in a liminal space of underlying erasure and loss. The name My Story Is Golden is a response to a pervasive erasure of Asian people,” said J P 제피. “We do not claim ourselves as a color in the way Black, brown, or white people do. ‘Yellow’ has been reduced to a slur. The intent is to transform yellow into gold. Gold is of value; it is the color of the sun; it is of the earth. I am advocating for my community to become visible, place-based, and rooted by claiming a golden identity and sharing layers of voice and story.”
The soundscape, woven with the voices of 24 storytellers, will be available at Gallery One and the International District Library. Twelve unique stories can be heard at Gallery One in City Hall and twelve more at the International District Library. Each story is tethered to the soundscape and intended to be heard onsite as a rooted, location-specific experience. Visit both sites to explore all the stories. The installation is interactive, so visitors will need their phone and earbuds to fully experience the soundscape and recorded stories.
“Every voice in our city matters, and this is powerful proof of the resilience within our Asian American Pacific Islander community,” said Mayor Tim Keller. “Public art often helps us listen, learn, and grow together, and this installation exemplifies that.”
J P 제피 is a bicultural and bigender artist, color explorer, tree steward, and truth seeker. S(he) challenges dominant narratives and creates inceptive spaces in a practice of spiritual activism, exploring the porous relationship between truth, beauty, and identity. They often find themselves deep in the weeds or high in a tree, and sometimes become a weed or a wild creature in these explorations. They are committed to tracing intercontinental and spiritual lines between land, trees, culture, ancestors, and community to map past, present, and future ecosystems of belonging.
My Story Is Golden video soundscape will be on view through June 20. The video installations are free and open to the public during regular hours of the International District Library and City Hall’s Gallery One.
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