CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/14/2026

A remarkable new book on Martin Wong

Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo) (1982) is reproduced from Martin Wong: Chinatown USA, the remarkable catalogue to the artist’s recent exhibition at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago. Featuring a fold-out poster cover over exposed Smythe-sewn, lay-flat binding, plus several gatefolds and paper changes, this beautifully produced volume pays a fittingly cacophonous/glamorous tribute to the artist and poet whose work explores ethnic and racial identity, queer sexuality, psychedelia, pop culture and the urban landscape. Referring to the nineteenth-century Chinese civil war the Taiping Rebellion, Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo) precedes the majority of Wong’s Chinese-focused paintings, and uses “the artist’s forebears as the entry point to his imagining of the Chinese American community,” Margo Machida writes. “Its central panel features an ardent, albeit rather mischievous, double portrait of Wong’s entwined mother and stepfather soaring high above San Francisco’s Chinatown. Their ascending bodies are framed by the symbolic portal to Chinatown: a red ceremonial gateway (paifang) with an overhead placard displaying the legend “Tai Ping Kuo” (Country/Kingdom of Peace) in Romanized lettering.”