A flashing sword blade split a single flower Friday as part of a performance by Los Angeles artist Dan Kwong.

The event, which took place at the Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbott Road, was called "From Inner Worlds to Outer Space: An evening of performance with Dan Kwong." Kwong blended narrative monologues with projected images, music and physical action to tell his story of growing up as an Asian American.

"I was always looking for a way to combine life and art," Kwong said. "With performance art, there is no right way to do it."

Kwong said Friday's show dealt with how society shaped Asian-American identity through a combination of traditions and oppression. He said the work was autobiographical to make the audience consider the way their life stories were shaped by society.

Michael Lewis, director of the Asian Studies Center, said the performance was part of the series "Asia and Diaspora: Traditions and Trajectories."

The series was created to promote cultural diversity on campus and will combine films, speakers and a conference to highlight how Asian Americans have influenced American culture, Lewis said.

"Dan has a really good reputation as a performance artist," Lewis said. "I thought it was excellent. I was really affected."

The performance began with a creative recreation of Kwong's birth. In the piece, Kwong placed his head over a doll-like body and responded to off-stage questions ub a format similar to a sports interview.

In the piece, which incited laughter from the audience, Kwong highlighted some of the conditions he faced while growing up without any Asian sports stars or actors as role models.

Barbara Ebel, an interdisciplinary studies in social science senior, said it was Kwong's use of humor that made his performance so powerful.

"It was a bitter sort of humor that left you hurting," Ebel said. "So when he switched gears and got serious, it wasn't out of place."

Kwong also performed a piece about the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was beaten to death by two unemployed autoworkers in Detroit.

Kwong alluded to the death of Chin during a piece where he hit baseballs into a chain-link fence facing the crowd.

During this sequence, a video projector related the story of Chin's death.

Kwong said Chin was attacked because he was Asian and the men were angry about losing their jobs to foreign auto competition.

The men were convicted of beating Chin to death with a baseball bat and then released after paying a $3,000 fine.

The internment of Asian Americans during World War II also was the subject of one of Kwong's selections, as he related how his grandfather was taken to a military camp and lost his business.

Kwong, a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, said he hoped people would come away from the performance with a greater desire to tell their own stories.

"People's stories need to be told with all the heat and passion with which they were experienced," Kwong said. "Not just the polite sanitized versions."