Yellow Tent/Tension: Transnational Feminist Art Storytelling

Research Poster Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate Exhibition

Presentation by Pin-Hsuan Tseng

Exhibition Number 8

Abstract

On September 21, 2022, I became acutely aware of my East Asian female body as a racialized woman of color for the first time. At the time, I was two months into my temporary stay in Pennsylvania, navigating life as a woman with non-standard American English. While walking through a shopping center, a tall man passed by me, his gaze locking onto mine as he muttered three words: “little yellow woman.” This racialized encounter compelled me to make a feminist decision—I purchased a $25 yellow tent and erected it in my small room in State College. I chose yellow to reclaim its historically derogatory connotations, such as the Yellow Peril in U.S. history. Inside my yellow tent, I create art, engage in multilingual wordplay with English, and foster an online feminist community. I also bring my tent to different sites in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, setting it up and sketching inside it. The tent embodies a transnational feminist lens, emphasizing multi-place mobility, self-reflection, and storytelling to challenge the rigid borders of U.S. immigration policies. More than personal space, the Yellow Tent is my participatory arts-based research to catalyze and empower ten East Asian women-identifying U.S. immigrants in expressing their transnational narratives through tent erection, tent-artmaking, and an online platform. Grounded in linguistic, material, and artistic dimensions, my yellow tent explores how its foldable, mobile nature functions as women immigrant agency, a feminist space, collectively challenging stereotypical representations of Asian women through participatory storytelling and artistic engagement.

Importance

This study introduces transnational feminist tent art pedagogy within participatory arts-based research (PABR) to empower East Asian women-identifying U.S. immigrants in sharing their transnational narratives through tent erection, tent-artmaking, and an online platform. It challenges stereotypical representations and informs inclusive art education curricula by integrating language, material, and artistic engagement. By reclaiming the racialized meaning of "yellow", this research transforms the tent into a feminist space for storytelling, mobility, and self-reflection. It also critiques linguistic hierarchies, such as Standard American English (SAE), through multilingual artistic expression. The tent’s foldable, mobile nature symbolizes transnational migration, fostering agency and community-building. This study contributes to art education, transnational feminism, and participatory arts, offering a new model for inclusive, immigrant-centered pedagogy.

DEI Statement

This study addresses race, gender, nationality, and citizenship status through transnational feminist tent art pedagogy, empowering East Asian women-identifying U.S. immigrants to share their narratives. It critiques racialized stereotypes, linguistic hierarchies, and migration policies that marginalize immigrant women. By integrating tent erection, tent-artmaking, and an online platform, this research fosters multilingual expression, mobility, and agency. The tent’s foldable, mobile nature symbolizes transnational identity and displacement, creating inclusive spaces for self-representation and storytelling. This study contributes to art education, transnational feminism, and participatory arts, challenging systemic inequities while advocating for civil and human rights, educational access, and social mobility in academic and artistic spaces.