In the early 19th Century, Chinese immigrants entering Canada and the U.S. were regularly detained in immigration buildings, where hundreds of poems recording their experience in detention have been found carved on walls, and have since been documented, translated, and published. 

In Marley Kong’s 2026 works, I Have Always Yearned to Reach Gold Mountain and When a Newcomer Arrives in America, two such poems are executed in calligraphy on top of digitally-altered historic photographs. The former depicts the exterior of the Immigration Building that once stood in Victoria, B.C., and the latter a dinning hall in the Immigration Station on Angel Island (next to the infamous Alcatraz Island) in San Francisco Bay, California. 

Kong’s rendering of the poems in calligraphy evokes a sense of historical authenticity; however, this is juxtaposed by the eerie fluorescent colours and the superimposition of the text on the photographs, which transcends the image back to the present day. In doing so, the artist not only highlights the past anger, frustration, hopes, and despair of the detainees, but also reflects on the immense progress made on racial equality since these poems were composed.