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MAT Art Education student Wujian Wang led his Middle School 131 class in the creation of digital artwork for “Five Senses of Chinatown,” an exhibition now on view at the Museum of Chinese in America. Located in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan, the museum is a cultural hub known for preserving and documenting the Chinese-American diaspora dating back to the 1900s.

The exhibition partners with more than 75 students from New York City's Transfiguration School, Middle School 131 and the High School for Dual Languages and Asian Studies to capture the character of this residential and commercial neighborhood through the senses of student artists. Drawings, paintings, collages, poetry and digital artwork are shown alongside historical artifacts from MOCA’s collection to link the present to the past. Together, along with interactive sense-based installations, the exhibition paints a collective portrait of the neighborhood.

Wang’s digital arts class used Adobe Photoshop to create artworks that illustrate Asian-American culture and life in Chinatown, following four weeks of researching, drafting and writing artist statements. Students focused on experiences that ranged from home life to public parks, businesses, restaurants, grocery stores and bubble tea shops. After the projects were finished and installed in the exhibition, Wang brought his class to the exhibition, giving students the chance to reflect on their work as they saw it displayed in a museum.

Through the MOCA Five Senses projects, Wang encouraged students to view their surroundings through a contemporary art-making lens, highlighting the cultural significance of their experiences and the physical locations that may have previously been overlooked. By visualizing and interpreting the five senses in digital art, students took on new roles as artists and local guides of New York City’s Chinatown.

“Five Senses of Chinatown” is on view through Sunday, May 26, at the Museum of Chinese in America, New York.