Happy Lunar New Year! To celebrate the Year of the Rat, Pearl River Mart presents artist Jerry Ma’s modern retelling of the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West.
Jerry Ma, Lion Dance
Jerry Ma, Lion Dance
In Wu Cheng'en's original 16th-century novel, Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), Sha Wujing (Sandy), and the mischief-making Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) accompany the monk Tang Sanzang on a pilgrimage to Central Asia and India to collect Buddhist scriptures. In A Chinatown Odyssey, Ma’s reinterpretation, the characters are transported to NYC’s Chinatown in the 1980s where they don streetwear instead of monastic robes and their adventures include grabbing dim sum, having bubble tea, checking out a fish market, shopping for designer knockoffs, liberating a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken from an arcade game, and celebrating the new year with a festive lion dance.
Jerry Ma, Fish Market
Jerry Ma, Doyers Street
Jerry Ma, Dimsum
Jerry Ma, Chinatown Arcade
“A Chinatown Odyssey is both a love letter and personal journey through the Chinatown I grew up with,” the artist wrote in the show’s introduction. “Who better to take that journey than Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and his cronies?” Ma notes that his childhood memories of Chinatown include dim sum, ginger candy, shopping for groceries, and “finally finding a place where everyone looked like me.” The Taiwanese-American artist adds that his work is influenced by the film series A Chinese Odyssey based on Wu Cheng'en's novel and starring Stephen Chow.
Hong Bao, a limited edition gold foil print, faithfully replicates a lucky red envelope and features the four characters in A Chinatown Odyssey alongside a rat—the Chinese zodiac sign for 2020.
Jerry Ma, Hong Bao
Ma’s lively prints burst with details of iconic Chinatown locales including Canal Street, Doyers Street, the Golden Unicorn Restaurant, and the Chinatown Fair video arcade. Images overflow with shoppers, diners, and tourists. Each scene vividly depicts the energy of the bustling Asian cultural hub and evokes nostalgia for anyone with memories of Chinatown who has experienced the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the neighborhood.
Born in Washington Heights, the New York-based graphic artist and illustrator founded Epic Proportions, an independent comics studio, in 2003 and created the graphic novel series Legend and co-created Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. Ma also produces t-shirts featuring Asian-American celebrities including Bruce Lee, Jeremy Lin, Sandra Oh, and Constance Wu. Learn more about Jerry Ma in this interview and at epicprops.com.
Click here to see my post on Monkey: Journey To The West, a stage adaptation of the novel by musician Damon Albarn, artist Jamie Hewlett, and director Chen Shi-Zheng that was performed at Lincoln Center in 2013.
A Chinatown Odyssey
Pearl River Mart
395 Broadway (at Walker Street), Second Floor, TriBeCa
Exhibition on view January 18 through March 8
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