Arrivals
Location: 1 Ferry Building, Grand Hall, San Francisco
Time: July 19 – August 2, 2026
MK Wong’s latest work is featured in the landmark Arrivals Art-In-Neighborhoods exhibition presented by ArtSpan and the San Francisco Ferry Building. This series is excerpted from Wong’s graphic novel memoir, The Sun Represents Your Heart, a project born in response to the devastating rise of anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination during the pandemic. This memoir celebrates the lives of AAPI elders while addressing health inequities, especially for those with Limited English Proficiency.
The Ferry Building has stood as a historic portal of entry into San Francisco since 1898, making it the perfect stage to explore what Wong calls the “perpetual arrival”—the lifelong, psychological journey of navigating the spaces between a lost homeland and an evolving home. The contributed works—digital archival prints of hand-drawn graphite illustrations with digital color—embody Wong’s conceptual style of layering memory, history, and time, utilizing fantastical elements to enhance the storytelling experience.
Seen through Wong’s point of view as a gay son and immigrant from Hong Kong, these paintings celebrate the diverse, full lives of AAPI individuals from childhood to adulthood. The pieces provide intimate, warm glimpses of these journeys—from the youthful sanctuary of Toy Shop on Waterloo, to the domestic warmth of Mom’s Kitchen, to the community spaces of a local Barbershop. Placed alongside five other immigrant artists in the Grand Hall, Wong’s work aims to transform this historic transit hub into a space of active dialogue, honoring the diverse languages, dualities, and resilience of those who cross its threshold to find where they belong.
The Sun Represents Your Heart (at dawn)
太陽代表妳的心(黎明)
The Sun Represents Your Heart (at dawn), a short graphic novel memoir by artist MK Wong, invites you to experience a visually engaging journey that celebrates the profound bond between an elderly mother and her adult child—a relationship defined by family caregiving. The story, told through a fantastical lens, explores the multiple roles of an elder—as a mother, wife, friend, patient, and volunteer—and ultimately, as an individual navigating her own mortality. Born from the rising racial discrimination faced by the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, especially since the pandemic, the project also offers a poignant look at healthcare inequities for elders with limited English proficiency. In doing so, the project not only celebrates Wong’s mother but also honors countless AAPI elders and others who face similar challenges. Commissioned by San Francisco Arts Commission, the event includes an artist’s talk and storytelling.
Related Events:
- San Francisco Public Library (Richmond Branch): Artist Talk (Fall 2025)
- City College of San Francisco (Chinatown Campus): Artist Talk (Fall 2025)
Breaking the Silence: Art & Mental Health
打破禁忌：藝術與心理健康
According to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), compared to those of other racial backgrounds, Asian Americans, especially immigrants, are the racial group least likely to receive mental health treatment – only 20.8% of Asian adults with a mental illness received treatment in 2020. The proposal, “Breaking the Silence: Art and Mental Health (打破禁忌：藝術與心理健康),” composed of seven sequential, autobiographical illustrative paintings highlighting critical moments often experienced by families of loved ones diagnosed with a severe mental illness, intends to raise mental health awareness within the AAPI community as well as other minority communities. Mental illness affects not only the patient, but the entire family as well. The paintings chronicle a younger brother’s witness of his teenage sister’s mental deterioration over time. In the paintings, colors, fantastical elements, and real-life objects intermingle and come together to break down the heaviness of the topics and reconstruct them into a visually engaging story accessible to a wide range of audiences.
Related Events:
- 6th Annual National Alliance on Mental Illness Contra Costa AAPI Mental Health Awareness, UC Berkeley (Spring 2025)
About the Artist
MK Wong’s practice is a forensic and emotional excavation of “unearthed” histories, centered on the invisible labor of caregiving and the resilience of immigrant families. Wong’s work functions as a bridge across time, narrated through a dual lens: the visceral, unfiltered perspective of his childhood self and the informed, advocacy-driven viewpoint of his adulthood. This intersection allows Wong to confront systemic inequities and the “model minority” myth by centering narratives that are often sidelined in Western historical accounts.
Wong specializes in sequential narratives and graphic novel memoirs, utilizing a visual language he describes as “heightened reality.” By pairing mundane, real-life objects with surrealist metaphors, Wong translates complex themes—such as the emotional landscape of elderly care, mental illness, the weight of medical advocacy, and the nuances of cultural identity—into accessible, atmospheric stories. Wong’s work is intentionally grounded in a non-Western perspective, honoring the damaging effects of colonialism on the colonized while celebrating the preservation of heritage within the immigrant communities of San Francisco.
Technically, Wong’s process is a hybrid of the physical and the digital. Each composition begins with traditional drawing, where Wong intentionally preserves the residues of erased pencil markings. These “ghosts” of the initial sketch are vital; they provide a trace of human touch within a digital format, acting as a metaphor for the persistence of memory and the labor of the hand. Wong then layers these sketches with digital color and texture, creating a final product that feels both modern and historically rooted. Wong’s goal is to demand active participation from the viewer, inviting them to embrace the unfamiliar and recognize the profound dignity in the everyday act of care.
