The Chinese cowboys challenging American Old West narratives through art and self-discovery
Whether through art or immersion in the rancher lifestyle, these Asian men are redefining what it means to be a cowboy in the American West
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.
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.
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.
For his 2021 exhibition “Silent Spikes”, 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.