“Abandonment and Exclusion in the Context of the Chinese Exclusion Act” featuring Cheryll Leo-Gwin

Cheryll Leo Gwin is a multi-media artist whose work has focused on the experiences of Chinese and Chinese-American women. In this presentation, she will describe and discuss how the Chinese Exclusion Act has impacted both her personal life and her art. Cheryll’s art eloquently illustrates how when traumatic memories are lost, subsequent generations can repeat the trauma. We will look at Cheryll’s paintings and one of her films to understand the tendency to reject and to scapegoat others who are different from us. We will apply this understanding to both the past and the current political context of immigration trauma. The discussion of Cheryll’s art will be facilitated by Erica Rubin and Mary Sacco.

Cheryll Leo-Gwinn, MA is a fourth generation, Chinese-American artist whose art has been exhibited in England, China and throughout the United States. She has received numerous awards including grants from 4Culture, the Artist Trust, the City of Bellevue, the Washington State Arts Commission, and the Fulbright Foundations Senior Scholar Fellowship Roster. For the past 10 years she has been recording oral histories from women in China who survived Mao’s Tze Tung’s Cultural Revolution, and Chinese American women who participated in our Civil Rights and Women’s movements. She is currently working on a Podcast entitled “Buried Alive,” about young Chinese artists and poets who, abandoned by their government and their families, created underground salons to fight oppression through their art.

Mary Sacco, MA, LMHC is a third-year candidate at the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.  She has a private practice and sees patients at Wellspring Counseling.  Her interest in art goes back to childhood when she started painting and drawing.  In New Mexico where she lived for many years, the weather permitted her to indulge in long hours of painting the vast, high desert landscape.  In the current political landscape, she has felt pulled to put her creative energy in dialogues around repairing the damages of racism and community building through compassion.

Erica Rubin, PsyD is a psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapist with a particular interest in intergenerational trauma and the impact of world events on individual psychology.  She is an art lover and an amateur poet.  She sees adults in private practice in Madison Valley.