Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network Book Launch

On Sunday, Oct 26, 2021 Artist Space hosted a book launch and reception for “Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network”, edited by Howie Chen and published by Primary Information, 2021. It was wonderful to reconnect with members of Godzilla and celebrate the publication of this incredible anthology of writings documenting the history of Godzilla since its founding in 1990.  The Godzilla alumni pictured here, l to r: Ken Chen, Arlan Huang, T. Arai, Sowon Kwon, Howie Chen, Colin Lee, Eugenie Tsai, Helen Oji, Nina Kuo, Shelly Bahl.  (Photo by Lia Chang)

For more information about the book: https://primaryinformation.org/product/godzilla-asian-american-arts-network-1990-2001/

Recess Art Community Board Members

Happy to announce that this fall, I will begin serving my first term on the Recessart Board. I’m joined by new Board members M. Carman Lane and Sarah Hoover and Artist and Community Fellow, Prerana Reddy.  I’m honored and excited  to be a part of the Recess family and look forward to supporting their mission to partner with artists to build a more just and equitable creative community.

 https://www.recessart.org/about/

Monument Lab: 2020 Transnational Fellows →

This year, I have been selected to join Monument Lab’s 2020 cohort of artists, activists and civic practitioners who will be reimagining monuments in sites and spaces across North America and Germany. 

Monument Lab is a public art and research studio that critically engages the public art we have inherited to reimagine public spaces through stories of social justice and equity. Monument Lab aims to inform and influence the processes of public art, as well as the permanent collections of cities, museums, libraries, and open data repositories.

Monument Lab Fellows from this and last years' cohorts will be featured in Shaping the Past, a multi-site exhibition and book project that addresses pressing issues around what, whom, and how  to remember in public spaces. Shaping the Past is a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb) and was founded through a grant from the Surdna Foundation.

Building A Cultural Movement

The Wing on Wo Project (WOW) celebrated its third anniversary on Friday, June 14th and I was invited to read poetry from the pages of Bridge Magazine, a legendary Asian American publication of Basement Workshop that was in print from 1971-1985. In the words of poet Lawson Inada, Bridge was ‘proof that we were a Movement’; it was an archive of activism that documented and celebrated what it meant to be an Asian in America. Acknowledging the past contributions of Asian American artists is just one way that the WOW project is building a new intergenerational cultural movement that is inspiring young APA cultural workers across the country.

2019 Create Change Artists in Residence

The Chinatown Art Brigade is pleased to announce that we are the recipients of a 2019 Create Change Laundromat Project Residency. This is a year-long residency and financial support for our Here to Stay: Housing for the People Mapping Project; a collaborative, critical mapping project centering on place-keeping efforts in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The HFTP is a bilingual multimedia project featuring short video and audio testimonials from tenants who are directly impacted by displacement. ​CAB will be working on the final edit of short films with the goal of completing additional videos about public housing in Chinatown. An important component of this project will be the development of a bilingual multimedia website that will allow viewers to access the map and videos about the community, view archival materials about housing activism, receive know your rights information, and learn about the long history of CAAAV’s tenant organizing in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

This support will cover the Brigade’s ongoing cultural production with CAAAV’s Chinatown Tenants Union (CTU), and the completion of additional videos for the mapping project and the design and development of a multimedia website dedicated to this mapping project. 2019 will mark our second year as Artists in Residence with the Laundromat Project and we would like to thank the LP for it’s sustained investment in the work we are doing in the Chinatown community.

To view our mural map of Chinatown and listen to tenant’s stories, visit the CAAAV office on 55 Hester Street, NYC.

Here to Stay

The recently formed Chinatown Art Brigade and founding artists Betty Yu, ManSee Kong and Tomie Arai are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a 2016 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement grant and an Art and Social Justice Grant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation for our project ‘Here to Stay’ a collaboration with the grassroots organization, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities.  Here to Stay will be a series of large scale public projections that address gentrification and change in NY Chinatown .  For more information about the Here to Stay project please visit:

http://www.chinatownartbrigade.org/#intro

The Chinatown Art Brigade has also received support from the Asian Women's Giving Circle through their 2016 grants for Women, Arts and Progressive Social Change.

Here to Stay summer workshops at the CAAAV offices have begun, with members of the Chinatown Tenants Union and Chinatown Art Brigade volunteers gathering to discuss ways to support the Chinatown Working Group's rezoning plan.