“After so many conversations with artists about the positioning of Chinatown on Indigenous land, I’m further convinced that the iconic monument of Chinatown needs to be reconceptualized. Simply repeating traditions is insufficient and doesn’t reflect the realities of today.”
Lee Rayne Lucke
Lee Rayne Lucke is an artist, community organizer, and cultural worker. Their work addresses issues of spatial justice in order to call attention, mobilize, or divert structures of power with collective artistic gestures and participatory processes. Together with an artist and Chinatown community group called aiya哎呀, they offer spaces to remember the emotional and geographic loss of amiskwacîwâskahikan’s Chinatown at its intersections. Through the lens of Chinatown, the work is postured to envision and practice decolonial and better ways of being in the city. The work spans public interventions, satirical performance, capacity building with anti-oppression workshops such as “still in chinatown on Indigenous land working space for artists and cultural workers,” organizing to form openings for better futures, and making social spaces of cultural care.
