alec dai (b. 1999) was born and raised in brooklyn, ny.

he is on the 2026 young photographer’s list in cultured magazine
he has recently shown at focus art fair with yveyang
he has previously shown at (in)directions: queerness in contemporary chinese photography at eli klein

(untitled) 1664 details my childhood home in bensonhurst, brooklyn. when the home was being renovated in 2004, my brother and i would hide in the basement boiler room, daring each other to crack and peel off the freshly laid tiles; a big game of chicken, each piece a bit larger than the last. our little hands dug for an imagined pot of gold, for secrets hidden underneath, for a passage to the other side of the earth — what we imagined as our parents’ homeland. i go back weekly to photograph, to search and search in this perpetual game of hide and seek: my father’s work lamps guide me through the dark corners of the house and my mother’s hand leads me through the verdant concrete backyard.

strange cargo documents extended time spent in and around locke, california, a historic chinatown built by chinese laborers in the early 20th century. the original buildings still stand today, part tourist area, part history rebranded. the chinese have left and new owners narrate its history. what gets put on the walls? who gets to be the shepherds of history? what do the ghosts whisper into the ears of the town’s residents?
i am reminded of the unbreakable ties between sex and race in immigration policy, how the page act preceded the exclusion act, how sex work is embedded deep in the labor history of the sacramento-san joaquin delta region, how martha found portraits of asian women at garage sales and hung them on the walls of her historic airbnb.

i think of edward said, “the orient…had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.” i think of sara ahmed, “the orient is both strange and familiar, or even that orientalism makes the stranger familiar…the other is reachable, as it has already been brought home.”

i think of how lisa named her thrift store on main street strange cargo: two green dragons painted on the storefront sign, tacked onto the front of the historic building.