Studio International: Betty Yu: ‘Wherever you are, there are folks fighting for their lives’

New York-based artist Betty Yu talks about the gentrification of her neighbourhood in Brooklyn and what galleries can do to help

by EMILY SPICER

Multimedia artist and activist Betty Yu was born in in 1977 in New York City, the youngest of four sisters. When her parents moved to the US from Hong Kong, her mother, Sau Kwan, found work in New York’s garment factories. “Mum worked in more than two dozen factories over a 30-year period,” Yu tells me. “She moved around quite a bit in union and non-union shops. The unionised shops sometimes practised even worse conditions, so it really made no difference.” Yu explored the terrible environment her mother – and many thousands like her – endured, in a documentary called Resilience, which debuted at the Margaret Mead Film Festival in 2000. The film also touched on Kwan’s leadership in the fight against exploitation and the hunger strike Yu’s sister Virginia participated in to draw attention to the exploitative environment in which Chinatown workers found themselves.

An archival photo display of Betty Yu's multimedia project (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park. Open Source Gallery, New York, 2018. Photo: Betty Yu.

Things got worse for the garment workers of New York after 9/11. “A lot of people lost their jobs in Lower Manhattan because Chinatown was so close to the Twin Towers,” Yu explains. “A lot of the trucks couldn’t get in to pick up and drop off garments, and that provided a window of opportunity for the real-estate developers to move in. It was at that point that a lot of workers ended up getting laid off.” Fortunately, her mother found work in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where Yu and her sisters had grown up.

Much of Yu’s work centres on her Brooklyn neighbourhood, but she has also made a number of short documentaries about social justice and gender. In 2015, she co-founded the Chinatown Art Brigade(CAB) with artists Tomie Arai and ManSee Kong. CAB, a collective that seeks to precipitate change through art, also collaborates with the local tenants’ union to tackle the negative impact of gentrification on Sunset Park. Of course, New York City is not the only place experiencing the effects of what some are calling modern colonisation. Issues of economic and social displacement are global, and the art world, Yu argues, is complicit in pricing out local communities. So what can be done? I spoke to Yu about gentrification and what artists and galleries can do to help.

Emily Spicer: After the hunger strikes featured in your documentary Resilience, did the conditions in Chinatown factories improve?

Betty Yu: The conditions are still bad. The sweatshops are coming back with similar conditions that my mum worked under, but not in such large numbers, so there’s not a lot of media attention because folks think they’re all overseas now.

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Open City Magazine: Mapping Displacement and Resistance in Sunset Park

How arts and tech can preserve intergenerational neighborhood stories and fight back against gentrification.

By Huiying Bernice Chan

Teresa Gutierrez’s cadences in Spanish pulsated through the television screen as she described the changes happening in Sunset Park, her neighborhood in Brooklyn.

“The rents are so high that our community can’t find decent housing or a healthy place to live for themselves,” Gutierrez, a long-time resident and immigrant rights organizer, said. “We need to organize to protect ourselves to know our rights.”

Gutierrez was among numerous Sunset Park residents who were interviewed by multimedia artist and activist Betty Yu for her interactive, multimedia exhibit, “(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park.”

“Sunset Park is home to one of the largest populations of Chinese residents in New York City, exceeding the number of those living in Manhattan’s Chinatown.”

Yu, a long-time Sunset Park resident, opened her exhibit highlighting the accelerated gentrification and community resistance in Sunset Park in September at the Open Source Gallery, in the heart of where she conducted her interviews.

Attendees were immersed in a curation of photographs, maps, and short films that brought to life stories of how Latinx and Chinese residents have created home in Sunset Park, intertwined with their concerns and organizing work against displacement today.

Sunset Park is home to one of the largest populations of Chinese residents in New York City, exceeding the number of those living in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They mostly live in the 8th Avenue area of the neighborhood, while Latinx residents live in the 5th Avenue vicinity. Today, about 50 percent of residents are Latinx, from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America, while 40 percent are Asians, mostly Chinese. There is also a growing Arab and Muslim community from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, and other countries in the Middle East.

In the last decade, the neighborhood has been a prime target of real estate developers that has led to accelerated displacement. Developers have been pushing to change zoning and land-use laws in Sunset Park so they can build more luxury housing and commercial buildings, especially in areas like Industry City.

A complex of former manufacturing buildings owned by Jamestown Market, Industry City is one example of a project that is already displacing long-time residents, especially in the Latinx segment of the neighborhood below 5th Avenue. A $1-billion venture that spans seven waterfront blocks from 32nd to 39th Streets, Industry City is being designed to be one of the country’s largest innovation-maker hubs. The development comes at a large cost to the neighborhood, as it attracts college-educated professionals and simultaneously pushes out working-class residents.

“A lot of my friends in the 4th Avenue side are gone, because they’ve been displaced,” Yu said. “It’s really weird walking around there. Because what’s happening there is about to hit the Chinatown part,” she continued.

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Sinovision Television: Betty Yu Shows Gentrification in Sunset Park

Gentrification has been a hot topic in New York. Manhattan’s Chinatown has already seen the impact, and Brooklyn is already underway.

Growing up in Sunset Park, Betty Yu has seen the changes firsthand in her grandparents neighborhood.

"Eastside Story" presents "Betty Yu: Multimedia Artist"

This short video is part of a series "Eastside Story" that aims to give voice to Asian-American creatives in New York. It features Betty Yu’s work as well as the work of Chinatown Art Brigade, a collective that I co-founded. This was produced in June 2018.

Betty wins the 2017 Documentary Film Award from James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism for "Three Tours"

Betty received the 2017 Documentary Film Award from James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism for "Three Tours". Her documentary film, "Three Tours" captures the lives of three U.S. military veterans, Nicole Goodwin, Ramon Mejia and Ryan Holleran, as they work to heal their wounds and battle with PTSD resulting from their deployments in Iraq. The film follows their transformation from U.S. military trained soldiers to agents of change advocating for proper mental health treatment of veterans and an end to unjust wars.

In the coming year Betty will be focusing on getting the film distributed and screened out in veteran communities, rural and communities of color that are most impacted by militarism and this "economic draft". She also hopes these powerful stories can be used as anti-military recruitment tools in schools. Now more than ever she feel it's important to get this film out there as Trump increases funding for the military to wage unjust wars, occupy foreign nations while accelerating his Islamophobia, hate and war mongering.

Read more here: http://ima-mfa.hunter.cuny.edu/ima-news/ima-alumna-betty-yu-ima-documentary-winner/

Sinovision Television: Resilience of The Chinatown Art Brigade

Betty Yu and The Chinatown Art Brigade use art to raise awareness and give a voice to communities being threatened by gentrification.

With strong ties to her Chinese roots and the strong will of a revolutionary, Betty fights to preserve the history of Manhattan's Chinatown which is rich with perseverance and a sense community built during a time of severe discrimination.

The Chinatown Art Brigade understands the importance of reaching out to and involving the people of the communities they represent. After all, it is their stories that need to be told.