The Lottery is a large scale, participatory installation merging personal stories about immigration with critiques of the United States’s discriminatory wealth-based policies that targeted working class immigrants, namely the Public Charge Rule. The immersive, multi-room project included a story collection experience co-created with local chapters of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA).

Visitors to The Lottery were randomly divided into two rooms, The Motherland or The Homeland, based on the ticket they received. These were separated by a paper wall, which was torn down by visitors on opening night, uniting the narrative across both rooms. Performers patrolled entrances to the separated rooms to keep visitors with the wrong tickets from entering the other room and reuniting with friends.

Handmade lanterns in The Homeland narrated my family’s immigration story from my perspective. The Motherland lanterns told the same story of reunion and separation from my grandmother’s point of view.

Banners interwoven throughout the piece outlined the history of policies targeting working class immigrants leading up to the Trump administration’s 2019-2020 attempt to add further punishing regulations and highlighted community organizations that visitors were encouraged to support that were fighting the Public Charge rule and advocating for immigrants in the DC area.

Photo credits: Fati Syed, Sara Hillstrom, Garland Quek, and Hernán Rivera.