Bald Eagle sculpture, by Shi-Mu Chen
To Use This Document
With Your Students
Date
1993–96
Description
3-D bald eagle sculpture made with folded magazine pages, papier-mâché, glue, and colored marker. On June 6, 1993, an immigration tragedy similar to that of the “Mexico” more than 150 years earlier occurred off the coast of Long Island. The cargo ship “Golden Venture” was nearing the end of three-month long journey from Bangkok, Thailand, and ran aground near Rockaway Beach. Nearly 300 migrants, most from Fujian Province, China, who had paid smugglers upwards of $30,000 each for the chance to reach America, were squeezed inside the ship. Ten of them drowned trying to reach the shore. Of the remaining asylum seekers who survived, most were captured by Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some were deported, others were sent to a detention center in York, Pennsylvania. While awaiting their fate for up to three and a half years, the detainees began using scraps of paper to practice the traditional Chinese folk art of paper folding known as zhizha or huzhi. This bald eagle sculpture, a symbol of American freedom so desperately sought by the maker, was one of many works sold by the activist group People of the Golden Vision to fundraise for legal fees.
Type
Artifact
Region
Long Island
Era
Contemporary United States
Topic
Community, Immigration
Repository
Identifier
2020.005
Source
Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY, Gift of Jonathan Olly, 2020
Rights
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