How Is Migration Woven Into America?

Stanford's Institute for Advancing Just Societies and Zócalo Public Square held the second in its nationwide series of events entitled “What Can Become of Us?” on August 15, 2025, at the Zhou B Art Center in Chicago.

With this series, IAJS and Zócalo, a unit of Arizona State University Media Enterprise, invite everyone to envision new perspectives on migration, America’s changing communities, and how people come together across differences.

Zhou B was founded in 2004 by brothers Shanzuo Zhoushi and Dahuang Zhoushi, natives of Guanxi, China, known for their abstract art. Dahuang opened the event, welcoming the sell-out crowd of almost 300 guests. 

“This is a center for art, for life, for people, and for the future. It is a dynamic home for creativity, connection, and cultural exchange,” he shared.  “This international platform is dedicated to supporting artists and enriching the broader community.”

Complex ancestry

The event opened with an on-stage conversation between the evening’s featured artist, Chicanx and Punjabi American weaver Kira Dominguez Hultgren, and Fareed Haque, guitarist and co-director of the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra.

The backdrop for their conversation was Hultgren’s piece, commissioned by IAJS and comprising multiple looms woven together as a suspended sculpture. Everyone in the audience was invited to weave strips of material that she plans to incorporate into the piece. After being displayed at Zhou B, the work will be housed at Stanford.

Among the topics Hultgren and Haque discussed were how the name and design for her piece came together. Asked by a new friend, “Where are you from?” Hultgren’s daughter sought a simple, even if imprecise, way to describe her complex ancestry, “so, I told her I was half-Indian.”

Evocative piece

Hultgren’s piece is an exploration of the complexity of that question for her family, which has never been “mostly-any-ethnicity.” In conversation with Haque, she described how she started with the American flag, then asked an AI chatbot a series of questions.

“So I asked, ‘If you could imagine what a fabric would look like, what a pattern would look like in the 1920s of somebody who is trying to pass as Hawaiian but is not actually Hawaiian, what would that fabric look like? And then in the 1960s, imagine that person is passing as mostly Punjabi or Indian, what does that fabric look like? And now imagine what it looks like for that person in the 1990s to be mostly Mexican-American or Chicana, what does that look like?’” she recalled.

Hultgren added many more elements to the design, including a recreation of her Auntie Amarjit’s tapestry-woven Punjabi vertical zigzag, creating the complex piece on view at the event.

"It's just amazing to me how powerful this intermingling of cultures is and how absolutely evocative this beautiful work is,” Haque said.

Stitching together the idea of America

The artist conversation was followed by a panel moderated by Stanford IAJS Faculty Co-director Brian Lowery and featuring Yale historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner David W. Blight, historic preservation leader Bonnie McDonald, and creative consultant and fashion designer Siying Qu.

They discussed how migrant communities help weave together our ideas of American life, prompted by questions from Lowery such as: “If this event is about weaving together America, what is America? Is it a place or an idea?”, “How has migration constructed America?”, and “What is the future of America?”

A complimentary reception followed, where guests continued the conversation with the artist, speakers, and each other over complimentary drinks and small bites, art-viewing, informal art talks, and live music by members of the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra.