historical sight: boise chinatown

public art

The work consists of three permanent stereoscopic viewers strategically placed at key locations in downtown Boise. Rather than offering a scenic view of a distant landscape, the viewers reveal the invisible history of their immediate sites.

When looking through the lenses, viewers see high-contrast historical photographs of Boise’s once-thriving Chinatown precisely aligned with present-day streetscapes. By overlaying a 19th-century reality onto the contemporary environment, the project highlights the erasure of a community under the combined effects of exclusionary immigration policies and misguided urban renewal schemes.

Materials: cast-metal viewfinders, archival photographs, interpretive maps, and ephemera.

Locations: The Grove Plaza, Capitol & Front St., and Capitol & Grove St.