The Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument have announced that Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong and Judy Chui-Hua Chung have been selected to design the Memorial to the Victims of the 1871 Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles.
They were selected from a group of six finalists by a panel of jurors comprised of curators, architects, critics, and activists.
This memorial will be sited in several locations where the massacre occurred, which are in and around the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, the historic center and birthplace of Los Angeles. The massacre, in which 18 to 24 people of Cantonese descent were lynched or shot by a mob of 500 people, was one of the worst mass lynchings in US history. Since the massacre, however, it was largely forgotten and left out of history books and public memory. This memorial will be one of the first and most significant to address a tragedy that is one of many in an extensive history of anti-Asian violence and legislation in the United States, which has included the driving out and destruction of hundreds of Chinese communities in the late 19th century, the exclusion and severe restriction of Asians from emigrating to the US for almost a century, and recent acts of racial targeting such as the 2021 Atlanta shootings.
Leong and Chung stated: “We are humbled by the historic significance of this memorial and honored that our proposal was chosen from a group of such talented finalists. While we are memorializing a massacre that reveals the long history of anti-Asian violence, we are also acknowledging that Asian Americans have been deeply rooted here since the beginnings of this city, state, and country. We are committed to commemorating the tragedy by honoring the victims and the diversity of this city they helped grow. We are grateful to the City of Los Angeles, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the 1871 Memorial Steering Committee, the panelists, and everyone who made this memorial process and this moment possible.”
Themes from Leong’s work in photography can be seen in the memorial design, including his photographs of Banyan trees in Sze Yup; his series Lookout Towers that explores migration and diaspora; his series Paris, Novembre which queries the representation of tragedy; and his series History Images, which pictures the erasure of history.
Yossi Milo congratulates Leong and Chung on this significant achievement. Their careful and thoughtful work will create a space for reflection, mourning, and education. The construction of this memorial will create a new space for visitors to understand history, and its existence begins a new era in which the 1871 Chinese Massacre does not go erased in the landscape of Los Angeles.
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