Portals of Kinship, Threads of Commerce featured the work of artist Thandi Cai and a new glimpse into the CAMOC archives. This show delved into the intricate relationship between kinship networks and commerce that shaped the spread of Chinatowns, which hold at their core a sense of disconnection–between generations, between those within and beyond Chinatown, and between museum collections and lived histories.

Thandi Cai (they/them) is a queer Indonesian and Chinese American artist from the American South exploring futurities of Asian diasporic identity through critical dialogue, textiles, performance, film, graphic design, and print media.

At the core of their creative and socially engaged practice is a desire to steer the world into a future that breaks free from colonial systems of gender binaries, nation-states, and capital. The goal of their work is to arouse imagination, pleasure, and improvisation to ideate new paths forward. Cai is immersed in researching and riffing off of histories where they find themselves and other Asian Americans absent (despite their irrefutable presence) to fabulate speculative fiction in which they are centered.

In 2020 Cai co-founded Meng Cheng Artist Collective in service of collective artmaking and dialogue in the Memphis community.  They are currently collaborating with the Chinese Historical Society of Memphis & the Midsouth in the creation of Bluff City Chinese, a documentary about the expansive voices of the Chinese diaspora in Memphis.