The Political Potential of the Chinatown Storefront
Abrons Arts Center is hosting its annual Lunar New Year mutual aid initiative, where art highlights and supports local businesses.
The motif of eight horses galloping (八骏图) in traditional Chinese ink paintings indicates strength, victory, and power. One common greeting with the arrival of the Year of the Horse, the current cycle of the Lunar New Year, which began February 17, is “may success arrive with the horse” (马到成功). Certainly, the year so far has been anything but slow.
Artist Singha Hon’s gorgeous rendition of this motif for 2026 queers the image of galloping horses by bringing in images from New York Chinatown’s working class. In her painting, the horses gallop together but tend to each other, more an image of mutual aid than military conquest. (Horses, after all, are herd animals.) In the body of a foal are the shadows of two elders with a baby, and in the other horses, we see a couple holding hands on a city bench, a statue of Guan Yin, and a bowl of noodles. Each represents values of collective, intergenerational strength, such as resilience, interdependence, abundance, and refuge.
As with last year’s terrific exhibition, Abrons Arts Center is once again hosting From Chinatown, With Love, a mutual aid initiative where art highlights and supports local businesses in Chinatown. This year’s theme is “Storefronts as Sites of Cultural Resistance,” and a centerpiece installation, titled “Everyday Objects Introduction,” features a storefront of its own. Artist Michelle Moy’s portraits of local business owners sit alongside everyday objects like a bottle of Lee Kum Kee premium soy sauce and bamboo steamers, as well as more niche objects like a special scooper and stuffed dragon from Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (a personal favorite of mine for decades now), and a DVD of Wang Hongxin’s class on advanced double nunchaku.
As part of the exhibition, viewers can stand before a full-length mirror proclaiming “Best Seller. Hot Deal! $2,026.” It was a dark night and a little chilly when I stood in front of the mirror, and I have to admit it gave me a little boost. Like the everyday store objects strewn around the exhibition, I felt recontextualized within the new year after a bruising 2025. My snake skin has been shed, and now it’s time to gallop with the horses.
Rounding out the show are community renditions of red envelopes from the year of the snake, which just ended, with black-and-gold representations of the animal. Equally lovely are collections of stamps from artists working in places like Cambodia and Japan, depicting other zodiac animals like the pig and rooster. And graphic art posters by artists Bill Chow and Masami Miyamoto depict the Year of the Monkey in 1980 and the Year of the Dragon in 2012. Set alongside Singha Hon’s galloping horses, the throughline of this rich array of artistic depictions is a reminder that the Lunar New Year zodiac animals have both institutional and individual significance, just as ready to be sponsored by large institutions as they are to be queered for mutual aid.
From Chinatown, With Love continues at the Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through March 22. The exhibition was organized by W.O.W. Project and Abrons Arts Center in partnership with Midnight Project and Lucky Risograph.
