Below is my visual essay, "Acts of Remembering" that was published in "Survivance" a collaboration between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and e-flux Architecture in May 2021. The essay debuts some of my mixed media collages I’ve been working on during the 2020-2021 pandemic year. Below are excerpts from the essay.
To read the full essay, CLICK HERE
To read more about my project click - “We Were Here: Unmasking Yellow Peril”
Betty Yu’s “The Garment Worker” and “In/Visible Labor in Chinatown” is included in SPACE Gallery’s exhibition Punctures: Textiles in Digital and Material Time, in Portland, Maine. The show is curated by Ekrem Serdar of Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center in Buffalo, NY. Drawing from the little-known but expansive history connecting media arts and textile production, the exhibition features artists invested in the material, critical, and liberatory politics of their intersections.
The show will be on display until July 3rd. Check it out if you’re in town.
Betty Yu, The Garment Worker (2014) and In/Visible Labor in Chinatown (2019), interactive screen, textiles, video, sound, documents, and other ephemera. (Photo by Carolyn Wachnicki)
CLICK HERE for more information about the exhibition.
Below are photos by Carolyn Wachnicki of my work on display,
Journalist Aruna D'Souza from The New York Times penned this Art-section cover story “Asian-American Artists, Now Activists, Push Back Against Hate” (from April 18th, 2021) that features Chinatown Art Brigade 唐人街藝術隊／ 唐人街艺术队's work and the important activism of other Asian American artists.
Excerpt from the feature article:
"This change in approach recently led 19 artists involved in Godzilla to withdraw from the exhibition planned by the Museum of Chinese in America in protest of what they called the museum’s “complicit support” of the construction of a jail in Chinatown. (The museum received a $35 million concession from the city, part of a program to invest funds in neighborhoods that will be affected by the construction of facilities in the aftermath of Rikers Island’s closure.)
The museum disputes this characterization. Nancy Yao Maasbach, the museum president, said, “MOCA has always unalterably and vocally been against a Chinatown jail,” adding that its position is that cultural funding for marginalized groups is “critical to redefining the American narrative.”
The artist Betty Yu, a founder of Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB), said that “The way to fight this kind of xenophobia and white supremacy is to organize and fight the root causes of structural racism and capitalism.” With her co-founders Tomie Arai and ManSee Kong, and a network of other artists and organizers, CAB has been working over the past five years to oppose the gentrification of New York’s Chinatown neighborhood and the resulting mass displacement.
The loss of affordable housing and the closing of garment factories employing thousands of new immigrants are not unconnected to the art world. More and more art galleries are moving into the area, driving up rents."
To read the full piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/arts/design/asian-american-artists-activism.html
American Scholar Magazine featured Betty Yu’s photography and multimedia project, “(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park“ in their current Winter 20201 issue!
You can pick up an issue of the magazine or read the full article online, link here and in my bio:
bit.ly/AmericanScholarBettyYu
You can also listen to their podcast where I was interviewed : "A Work in Progress: A Window on a Shrinking World" Podcast Interview
IMAGE: “Dad - still, quiet and daydreaming”. After working long hours for low pay in a garment factory my dad just wanted to sit and be still when he retired. 2019 (Sunset Park, Brooklyn. U.S.A.).
Excerpt from the article:
“Born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, artist Betty Yu has seen this neighborhood transformed by gentrification over the past several years. Her multimedia project (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park features stories of neighborhood residents affected by the breakneck changes around them. At one point, she realized that the project was missing a deeper look at her own family’s story: her parents settled in Sunset Park more than 40 years ago, after emigrating from Hong Kong. So in 2019, Yu shifted the lens to her mother and father and their ongoing fight to hold on to their home.
—Jayne Ross”
Imagining De-gentrified Futures
Curated by Betty Yu
Virtual Opening and Tour: Nov. 4, 2020 6pm EST RSVP Here
On view Thurs. - Sat. 1 pm - 6 pm
Nov. 5 - Dec. 19, 2020
3D Online and at 291 Church Street, NYC (reserve a timeslot to visit)
Featuring Work By:
Black Quantum Futurism
Imani Jacqueline Brown
Chinatown Art Brigade
Sandra de la Loza
Robin Holder
Betty Yu
Radical Housing Manifestos:
Thomas Angotti
Alicia Grullon
Hate Free Zone
Lynn Lewis, The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project
Antoinette Martinez, Protect Sunset Park
Robert Robinson
Pati Rodriguez, Mi Casa No Es Su Casa
Samuel Stein
Sunset Park Popular Assembly
Works featured in “Imagining De-gentrified Futures” at Apexart Gallery
See works HERE
Working class communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color across U.S. cities have been disproportionately impacted by hyper-gentrification and displacement over the last fifteen years.
Is it possible to disrupt dominant narratives that depict gentrification as “inevitable” and a “natural” part of urban evolution—monolithic assertions that often come from real estate speculators, developers, extractive industries and the 1%? Can we harness our collective resources and trace a new trajectory that allows communities to flourish without being priced out of our neighborhoods?
Imagining De-gentrified Futures is an interactive exhibition attempting to imagine socially-just futures for our cities and aiming to rethink the assumed trajectory of urban development. Drawing inspiration from anti-gentrification resistance across the U.S., decolonization movements, and Afrofuturism, this exhibition gives permission to imagine, to dream, to unleash and explore ways in which socially-just futures can exist for city communities.
Works on view take a variety of approaches to examine and suggest strategies for the challenges in cities like Hollywood, Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York City’s Chinatown and Brooklyn’s Sunset Park.
Imagining De-Gentrified Futures is an apexart Invited Curator Exhibition. For more information please visit apexart.org/yu.php or contact elizabeth.larison@apexart.org.
My new multimedia work "Resistance in Progress" will officially be on view starting tomorrow, September 16th and open to the public at Queens Museum! This work is part of "After the Plaster Foundation, or Where Can We Live?" a group exhibition that will be up until February 28th 2021.
My new work "Resistance in Progress" highlights the ongoing fight against luxury development and gentrification in Flushing, Queens featuring video, photography, text and other mixed media. I'm really proud that this work is translated into 4 languages - English, Korean, Chinese and Spanish.
READ THE October 29th, 2020 NEW YORK TIMES Review CLICK HERE (or see below)
Photo from the COVID-19 “New Normal” Opening
The heart of the this new work are the stories of Flushing residents and community organizers - Seonae Byeon and Bobby Nathan from MinKwon Center for Community Action 민권센터 and their steadfast commitment in the fight against displacement in Flushing. I am so grateful to them for their time and generosity.
Thanks Tarry Hum for her guidance and expertise. Thanks to Cristina Ferrigno for her work on initial design of the timeline in the show. Thanks to 共鳴 Collective for Language Justice 鳴義社 and all of the others who helped with translation. And thanks to the museum staff for all of their help and patience!
You can read more about SHOW here: https://www.qgazette.com/articles/the-queens-museum-from-home/
Check out the online reader that supplements the show: https://aftertheplasterfoundation.queensmuseum.org/contents/betty-yu
WATCH THE VIDEOS featured in the show click below or CLICK HERE (for Chinese, Korean and Spanish translations):
About the Exhibition:
Look at, read, and listen to the online publication for our upcoming exhibition "After the Plaster Foundation, or, 'Where can we live?'", in which twelve New York City-connected artists and artist groups address shelter, home, and mobility. Find previews of their works, readings they suggested, audio of the artists talking about their ideas, and in some cases, special new projects.
"After the Plaster Foundation, or, 'Where can we live?'" features works by Jennifer Bolande, Ilana Harris-Babou, Heather Hart, Simon Leung, Shawn Maximo, Sondra Perry, Douglas Ross, Peter Scott, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Caroline Woolard, and Betty Yu, and artifacts from the collection of Museum of Capitalism.
Short video by Mariam Bolkvadze about Betty Yu’s "Resistance in Progress" at Queens Museum
