TIES THAT BIND: THE ROLE OF LATINO AND ASIAN INTERMARRIAGE IN THE MAKING AND TRANSFORMATION OF SILICON VALLEY
Commissioned work by Lissa Jones and Jennifer Ahn
September 21 – November 2, 2002

This exhibition was a culminating project of a two-year initiative undertaken by MACLA as part of the Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy Initiative.  Through the use of oral history, photography, and public dialogue the project collected stories of intermarriage between Asians & Latinos in Silicon Valley.  The exhibition represented how artists might approach the creation of artwork in relation to social memory and civic culture.  The artists, Lissa Jones and Jennifer Ahn, were charged with creating a whole new body of work as a result of their documentation and interactions with the participating 15 families.  Rather than a straightforward “family portrait” approach, the artists chose to combine all of the photos from the participating families and present the images as part of a series of installations.  Ties That Bind traveled to Arte Americas in Fresno, California during the summer of 2004.