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In the American imagination, the cowboy is a lone, stoic sentinel, silhouetted against a burning horizon as he guides his horse through the dust of the Western frontier. He is the mythic hero of a thousand sun-drenched films defined by his wide-brimmed hat, silver-spurred boots and leather chaps, and who fiercely defends his independence.<\/p>\n
Chinese immigrants were largely railroad workers or laundrymen, but they were integral to life in the Old West. Some even report the existence of Chinese cowboys, most famously Jim Sam, a rancher and cattle worker in late 19th-century California. Buckaroo Sam, according to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, was a ranch foreman in the northern part of the state of Oregon.<\/p>\n
Scholarly research on Chinese cowboys remains relatively niche, but that has not stopped contemporary Asian-American artists from employing the cowboy character to explore their diasporic identity.<\/p>\n
For his 2021 exhibition \u201cSilent Spikes\u201d, which toured the US, Kenneth Tam created video and sculpture works in which Asian-American men posed as cowboys, draped in starched denim and bandanas, while riding a simulated horse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n