Join Pao Arts Center for the opening reception of its two Spring 2023 Exhibitions: Workers Statues in Chinatown by Wen-ti Tsen and Call and Response: Illustration in Uncertain Times. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet the artists and learn more about their work. See below for more information about each exhibition.
Workers Statues in Chinatown by Wen-ti Tsen pays tribute to the workers who have uplifted Boston Chinatown through their essential labor over the decades. The four sets of clay models Tsen has developed for the project represent four different workers from the Chinese immigrant community: the laundryman, the restaurant worker, the garment worker, and the grandmother tending a child. Each set of figures will serve as models in the creation of life-sized figures to be cast into bronze and permanently installed in prominent public spaces across Chinatown. These statues will offer a more complex and diverse reflection of our local histories and question who is celebrated through public art in our City.
Call and Response: Illustration in Uncertain Times features illustrations and graphic designs by seven local AAPI artists who have used their craft to speak to this complicated moment. As with other kinds of labor, these artistic gestures offer critical support to the community by giving voice to different experiences and encouraging care.
Curated by: Leslie Anne Condon
Participating Artists: Deborah Johnson, payal kumar, Lillian Lee, Shaina Lu, Yuko Okabe, Sanika Phawde, Wen-ti Tsen
Opening Reception | Friday, March 31, 2023 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Registration is required, please register here.
Contact Leslie Condon, Visual Arts Manager, with questions Leslie.Condon@bcnc.net
About the Artists
Deborah Johnson (she/they) is a queer Indian-American multidisciplinary artist based in Boston, Massachusetts. She works predominantly in digital illustration and painting in gouache. She is currently completing her Master’s in Social Work at Boston College. Deborah utilizes bright and joyful colors and written affirmations to address issues of mental health, the importance of intimate friendship and the beauty of queer relationships. The emotions of joy and love are inherently political and she hopes her art provides a rest stop for individuals to reflect on those values. To learn more about Deborah’s work for the show, click here.
payal (they/them) is a multidisciplinary cultural worker, sexual and reproductive health justice advocate, and organizer whose work is rooted in the in-betweens. Currently based on Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Wampanoag territories, they invoke the power of intergenerational community building to construct tender new possibilities of being beyond borders and capital. Their illustrations, zines, spoken word pieces, and workshops have found a home across Chinatown walls and grassroots protests, in gallery spaces like the Museum of Fine Arts and international TRANS* Future Archives, and through collaborative learning spaces like the Allied Media Conference and the School of Arts and Social Justice Boston. payal's visual work weaves together folk art from their ancestral villages in Bihar with traditional Americana motifs to amplify peoples’ movements and explore the in-between spaces of trauma, coloniality, queerness, and embodiment. They are an organizer with Subcontinental Drift Boston, a monthly multilingual open mic centering South Asian diasporic voices, and with the Boston South Asian Coalition (BSAC), a transnational organizing collective fighting for labor, race, caste, and gender equity. Through creative strategies, they cultivate playful spaces that challenge the state's monopoly on Imagination so that we may all fully unearth and activate our collective power. To learn more about payal’s work for the show, click here.
Lillian Lee (she/her) is an illustrator, designer and cartoonist of Empty Bamboo Girl comics, which appears in the Sampan Newspaper. In high school, she was rejected from the art advanced placement class. It was a crushing blow. Years later, after having graduated from UMass Amherst and working in publishing and tech, she applied and was accepted to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Since then, she has worked in character design, editorial illustration and collaborated on a line of baby apparel and stationary. Currently, she lives in Boston, MA, where she was born and raised, with her husband, toddler and cat. She is also a member of a lion dance team and is a Swiftie. To learn more about Lillian’s work for the show, click here.
Shaina Lu 呂明穎 (she/her), a queer Taiwanese-American community artist exploring the intersection of art, education, and activism. Shaina has been an ESL teacher in Yunnan, a media arts teacher in Boston Public Schools, and a child-care program director in Chinatown. She loves juice. To learn more about Shaina’s work for the show, click here.
Yuko Okabe (she/they) is an illustrator and cultural worker playing at the intersection of youthful whimsy and community engagement. She holds a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. Fellowships include RISD’s Maharam STEAM Fellowship with the Boston Children’s Hospital, RISD’s Leadership and Community Engagement Fellowship with DownCity Design, Enterprise Community Partners Rose Fellowship with North Shore Community Development Coalition, and the Walter Feldman Fellowship for Emerging Artists. She has been awarded residencies from the Walkaway House, Pao Arts Center, and Urbano Project. Okabe’s work has received recognition from the Society of Illustrators NYC, Society of Illustrators LA, Creative Quarterly, and 3x3 The Magazine of Contemporary Illustration. Collaborators include Big Cartel, Hester Street, Design Studio for Social Intervention, The New York Times, City of Boston Arts and Culture, and Light Grey Art Lab. For children’s books, she’s represented by Andrea Morrison of Writer’s House. Okabe is a proud auntie and an amateur oatmeal influencer @yukoats. To learn more about Yuko’s work for the show, click here.
Sanika Phawde (she/they) is an illustrator, educator, cartoonist and reportage artist born and raised in India and based between Providence, Boston and New York City. To learn more about Sanika’s work for the show, click here.
Wen-ti Tsen (he/him) is a painter and public artist. He was born in China, grew up in Paris and London before coming to the U.S. to study art at Boston Museum School. Since the mid-1970s, after living and traveling for several years in different countries, he has been engaged in making art that explores cultural connections: with personal paintings and installations, large-scale public art sculptures, and working with communities to express social issues in various art forms. To learn more about Wen-ti’s work for the show, click here.
Wen-ti Tsen’s work is being featured in a solo exhibition, Chinatown Workers Statues in our lobby gallery, and our Spring 2023 group show, Call and Response: Illustration in Uncertain Times.