Evelyn Wong

Interdisciplinary artist Evelyn Wong works with themes of identity, race and gender, community, and storytelling. Wong often researches histories and socio-political issues that have affected or are affecting Asian Americans to inform her art.

In Mooncakes for Democracy, she recalls and updates an ancient tale about love and betrayal to coincide with the 2020 United States presidential election.

Wong draws upon the mooncake legend about their use during the Yuan dynasty as a vessel for dispersing secret notes, helping the Han Chinese overthrow their Mongolian rulers. The rebels spread a rumor about a terrible illness and the only way for the people to prevent it would be to eat special mooncakes. The Mongols did not like mooncakes, so they did not discover the secret messages hidden inside them that alerted people to take part in an uprising on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. People celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival with mooncakes once they overthrew the Mongol ruler.

Wong’s mooncakes are entirely edible (made from rice paper, food coloring, egg wash, adzuki bean liquid, and paste), and carry on the tradition of secret messages. Each ornate box is decorated with a letter (V, O, T, or E); collectively, they spell the word “vote” and its contents are notes to viewers about democracy. Each mooncake conceals scripts that Wong sourced from the Declaration of Independence. As we fight a national illness, Wong questions if we will remember the words of our country’s first rebels against a great tyrant?

“When extreme politicization, a pandemic, and racial injustice are rocking the U.S., this piece by Evelyn Wong is a contemporary take on an act of subversion from ancient China when notes were hidden in mooncakes to spread word of an uprising to overthrow an unjust ruler. This loaded cultural take on the importance of voting reminds us that people have power.”
- **Ayumi Horie**, *Untitled* juror

“V” mooncake

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

“O” mooncake

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“T” mooncake

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.

“E” mooncake

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Watch the February 26, 2021 “Intersections” conversation with Josh Reiman and Evelyn Wong

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Graeme KennedyJanuary 29, 2021untitled artists

Evelyn Wong

Interdisciplinary artist Evelyn Wong works with themes of identity, race and gender, community, and storytelling. Wong often researches histories and socio-political issues that have affected or are affecting Asian Americans to inform her art.