Credit: Mel Taing
Exhibit Extended, Gallery will be closed Saturday, February 17 as we prepare for our Lunar New Year Celebration on Sunday, February 18 . Gallery will reopen for normal hours on Thursday, February 22 - Friday, March 16, 2024.
Wen-ti Tsen’s Chinatown Worker Statues project pays tribute to the workers who have uplifted Boston Chinatown through their essential labor over the many decades. Upon completion, it will consist of four sets of bronze statues representing four different workers from the Chinese immigrant community: the laundryman, the restaurant worker, the garment worker, and the grandmother tending a child. Fusing public art and community activism, these statues will offer a more complex and diverse reflection of our local history and question who is being honored with statues in our city.
This past spring, Tsen exhibited the 40%-scale clay models for this project, which has been thirty years in its conceiving. In this next phase of the project, he returns to the gallery to model in clay, the life-size statue of one of the figures, “Laundryman.” Once the four sets of statues are complete, they will be cast into bronze in a sculpture foundry, and subsequently installed permanently in prominent public sites across Chinatown. These designated places will be announced soon by the City of Boston to the public.
While you can visit the exhibit any time during gallery open hours, during the following select hours, Tsen will work on-site, and invites visitors to see his progress in real time.
Wen-ti Gallery Hours
Friday, Feb 23 - Saturday, March 16
Thursdays (4:00 - 6:00 PM) February 29, March 7, March 14
Fridays (3:00 - 5:00 PM) February 23, March 1, March 8, March 15
Saturdays (1:00 - 4:00 PM) February 24, March 2, March 16
Times subject to change, check Pao Arts Center’s social media for updates
About the Artist
Wen-ti Tsen. Credit: Alonso Nichols.
Wen-ti Tsen (he/him) is a painter and public artist. He was born in China and 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. He has also taught, and participated in organizing in many different circumstances.
Read more about Chinatown Worker Statues in the press!
PRX and Mellon Foundation's Monumental Podcast hosted by Ashley C Ford, November 20, 2023
WCVB Chronicle, December 5 2023
WBUR Field Guide To Boston, January 17, 2024
Contact: Cynthia Woo