Special Programs

Special Programs

W.O.W.’s Special Programs works to serve the community through hosting events and facilitating conversation addressing relevant issues; stretching across generations, differing economic backgrounds, as well as language barriers. W.O.W.’s programs have explored topics such as intergenerational approaches to homemaking and community building, resisting co-optation of these spaces by gentrifying forces and white supremacy, as well as the heightened importance of these efforts in light of the global pandemic that has put these communities at heightened risk. W.O.W.’s programming this year created accessible alternative spaces for community engagement and fostered a sense of connection, resilience, and most importantly, hope in the midst of the particular challenges of this year. This year, W.O.W. hosted several public programs spanning a range of mediums and formats including panel discussions, workshops, and exhibitions such as Homeward Bound in Boston, and artistic community initiatives including Love Letters to Chinatown and its associated mural project.

Abrons & W.O.W. Project Lunar New Year Party Homeward Bound Love Letters to Chinatown 4 Year Anniversary: Care As Community Medicine Programs

Abrons & W.O.W. Project Lunar New Year Party

Abrons Arts Center and Wing on Wo & Co. rang in the Year of the Metal Rat with a celebration for the Lower East Side and Chinatown community, featuring live performances by MazuDogs, Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute Dragon and Lion Dance Team, Vincent Chong and Wo Chan, karaoke, and DJ sets by HU DAT, Ushka, OHYUNG, and Yasmin Adele Majeed.

Clockwise from top left: LNY Year of the Metal Rat 2020 by Taehee Whang, children interact with lion dancers performing in the black box theater at Abrons (Photo by Shaira Caer) Alison Kuo and Noa Kasman lead an arts activity (Photo by Shaira Caer) Vincent Chong and Wo Chan perform on stage (Photo courtesy of Vincent Chong)

Homeward Bound in Boston

Pao Arts Center hosted Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns, an exhibition curated by queer Chinese American scholars, organizers, and artists Mei Lum, Diane Wong, and Huiying B. Chan. Homeward Bound centers narratives of home, community, and intergenerational resistance.

The exhibition draws from four years of ethnographic research and oral history interviews with the Chinese diaspora that spans nine countries and 13 cities.

The installation uses photographs, oral histories, and multimedia archives to highlight stories of migration, displacement, and everyday resilience in Chinatowns around the world. This exhibition is the first of its kind to honor, preserve, and build on the history and present day issues of Chinatowns through community-led and curated narratives from residents globally.

This project really made me more intentionally historicize the kind of gentrification that we’re seeing in Chinatown… There’s a lot of historical connections that can be made to the kind of disinvestment and now gentrification that we’re seeing of American Chinatowns and I think making those cross-country, cross-city connections is really integral to the future fight around evictions, around displacement. And I think it really highlights the kind of rich history of resistance and political agency that exists within these neighborhoods.

Diane Wong, Homeward Bound Curator ”

Clockwise from top left: Diane leads a digital tour of the Homeward Bound exhibit installed at the Pao Arts Center in Boston’s Chinatown (Photo by Mei Lum), photo gallery from the Homeward Bound exhibit (Photo by Hannah Claudia), Diane Wong, Huiying B. Dandelion, and Mei Lum at the Homeward Bound exhibit (Photo by Clara Lu)

The conversation that we had when we first landed with Roy and Erica [of Chinatown Community Development Center in San Francisco] really stuck with me: Whose Chinatown is this? What are we holding on to when we say we want Chinatown to stay the same?… When we think about an intergenerational community, all of our memories and nostalgia of home are different, and so what does that mean for our future? It just made me really think about what it means to build bridges across generations in order to have a common understanding of what we’re working towards, or what we want to build collectively…I’m still thinking about that now in my work.

Mei Lum, Homeward Bound Curator

Clockwise from top left: “Displacement” wall from the Homeward Bound exhibit (Photo by Clara Lu), Visitors walk through the exhibit (Photo by Hannah Claudia), Diane Wong and huiying b. chan present during the opening of the Homeward Bound exhibit (Photo by Pao Arts Center) Huiying b. chan speaking to visitors and visitors walking through the exhibit (Photo by Pao Arts Center)

This work is also a huge remembering, it’s a remembering of our roots and a preservation of our community in order to be able to shape its future. But it’s also like a huge remembering that is very much against the colonial education that we get in this country, the white history, and the white supremacist ideologies and values that get ingrained in us to forget where we come from and just assimilate or value other things.

huiying b. chan, Homeward Bound Curator ”

Top to bottom: Exhibit wall from Homeward Bound exhibit (Photo by Clara Lu), Anju Madhok and Mei Lum set up the “Home” exhibit wall (Photo by Diane Wong)

Love Letters to Chinatown

The Love Letters to Chinatown (LLTC) 給唐人街情書 project sought to collect love letters, poems, illustrations, paintings, etc. inspired and dedicated to Chinatown to help uplift our neighborhood in its darkest times. The project invited members in the community and across the diaspora to submit art: poetry, stories, letters, illustrations in response to Huiying B. Dandelion’s prompt: Write a love letter to a person, business, or organization you hold dear in Chinatown. Consider Chinatown as a living being. What would you say to Chinatown during this time? What do you want her to know? What stories do you want to share?

Volunteers translated the letters, and another group of volunteers posted them around the neighborhood according to our no-contact policy. By posting the letters across Chinatown, we hoped to bring love and care to our community, reminding us that we are resilient. These messages of love and support stood in contrast to empty community spaces and notices of business closures. A selection of submitted love letters were also archived in an interactive map website designed spearheaded by the summer interns and designed in collaboration with Aaron Reiss.

Left to right: Nisma Saadaoui posting Love Letters around Chinatown (Photo courtesy of Nisma Saadaoui), Love letter to Chinatown by Ally Pratt

Clockwise from top left: Love Letter to Happy Star Bakery by D Zhou, Love Letter to Chinatown by Laura E, “Add Oil” love letter by Mara Man, Love Letter to the Park on Forsyth St (Photo by LLTC Volunteers), Posted love letter to Tan Tin Hung Supermarket (Photo by LLTC Volunteers)

W.O.W. PROJECT 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY PROGRAMS

As a final closeout to the summer-long 4 Year Anniversary series and celebration, we curated a digital Care as Community Medicine Care Package which compiled materials for community care and resilience, drawing elements from each of the events. Inspired by the Smithsonian APA Center’s digital care package, the Care as Community Medicine Care Package collated media to explore what healing, resiliency, and grounding can look like during this particular time of grief and rage, while making room for hope. It draws from ideas of healing and regeneration explored in Chinese medicine, in which everything is interconnected, fluid, and cyclical. Our hope is that by giving our community the tools we need to care for ourselves, we expand our capacity to love and nurture the relationships necessary for the many fights ahead.

We Are Resilient: A National Conversation Across Chinatowns

A moderated discussion by Adriel Luis featuring a panel of groups from Chinatown communities across North America coming together to address urgent concerns in our various communities and for unity, solidarity, and community care. We were honored to be in community with San Francisco’s Chinatown community members and organizers Carmen Chen and Vida Kuang along with Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco, organizers from AYPAL in Oakland’s Chinatown, members of Chinatown Community for Equitable Development from Los Angeles, Youth leaders and community organizers CPA Boston’s Chinese Youth Initiative and Pao Arts Center in Boston, members of Chinatown-International District (CID) Coalition in Seattle’s Chinatown, members from aiya哎呀 collective in Edmonton, Canada and members of the 1882 Foundation in Washington D.C.

A Lineage of Healing: A Workshop with TCM Practitioner Donna Mah

A workshop on Traditional Chinese practices/remedies/pressure points for participants at home to learn more about caring for themselves and healing in ways that are both personal and collective. During the workshop, Donna taught us about the five elements form a dynamic cycle that feed each other in a continuous pattern - highlighting the ways in which everything from the personal to global is interconnected, fluid, and cyclical. Using the five element cycle, Donna offered participants ways to care for ourselves and our communities.

Movement as Grounding: A Qigong Workshop with Lingji and Singha Hon

Lingji and Singha Hon led a guided Qigong session and tutorial to help participants ground themselves with spiritual wisdom, learning the beginnings of the path to complete liberation through movement.

Masks as Protection: A Workshop with Cantonese Opera Performer Mee Mee Chin

In collaboration with Singha Hon and Alison Kuo, Mee Mee Chin guided participants through a Cantonese Opera make-up tutorial and other preparations for performance delving into how we share emotion through masks and makeup.

Illustrations by Sarula Bao

Our intern-led Open Mic that brought together NYC’s communities of color to imagine our futures grounded in care, healing, and resilience. Featured artists and presenters included poets Franny Choi and Kay Ulanday Barrett, healers Seyi Adebanjo and Charlie L’Strange from the NYC POC Healing Circle, artists Joseph Cuillier and Mitchell Reece from The Black School, and Jarrad Packard and Andrea Torres from Urban Indigenous Collective.

WOW 4 Year Anni Celebration Party

The celebration of our four year anniversary culminated in a performance and celebration featuring performances from the W.O.W. team, other members of the Chinatown and diasporic community including Cynthia Qian, Clara Lu, Vincent Chong, Mark Tseng Putterman, and DJ sets by OHYUNG and Yasmin Adele Majeed.

“Working with the W.O.W. Project to produce Masks as Protection was a life changing experience for me. As a biracial artist who does not have deep roots in the Manhattan Chinatown, WOW offered me a helping hand to reach out to the

Chinese Opera community here, and then a platform, amazing collaborators, and a wonderful audience with whom I was able to build this opportunity for all of us to learn and form bonds based around our love for Asian American performance culture. The W.O.W. Project is leading the way for artists and organizations to do this type of engagement work that is accessible, equitable, anti-racist and deocolonial. While these are some “buzz words” of our time, the real life result is incredibly personal and touching.

Alison Kuo, Masks as Protection Collaborator

Illustration by Singa Hon and bottom illustration by Sarula Bao

As a final closeout to the summer-long 4 Year Anniversary series and celebration, we curated a digital Care as Community Medicine Care Package which compiled materials for community care and resilience, drawing elements from each of the events. Inspired by the Smithsonian APA Center’s digital care package, the Care as Community Medicine Care Package collated media to explore what healing, resiliency, and grounding can look like during this particular time of grief and rage, while making room for hope. It draws from ideas of healing and regeneration explored in Chinese medicine, in which everything is interconnected, fluid, and cyclical. Our hope is that by giving our community the tools we need to care for ourselves, we expand our capacity to love and nurture the relationships necessary for the many fights ahead.

Graphic notes for We Are Resilient: A National Conversation Across Chinatowns program, by Clara Lu.

“Amidst a year of searching and isolation, We Are Resilient offered me a cherished opportunity to connect with the community in such a meaningful way. Moderating a conversation with thoughtful and deeply invested people from Chinatowns across

North America inspired me to reflect on how critical Chinatowns have been in my own life and lineage, and invigorated my sense of responsibility for their futures.

To this day, I remain connected with the people I met, and have also incorporated modes of healing that I learned from the Care As Community Medicine series into my everyday practice. I am so grateful for the W.O.W. Project for leading us toward a vision where we can honor our histories by thriving together.

Adriel Luis, Curator of Digital and Emerging Practice, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

”Special Programs

“Conceptualized in the earliest days of the pandemic and our collective isolation, the workshop started with ideas around a virtual offering of select Chinese Medicine-based practices to help folks ground and take care of themselves at home. The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 and our universal reckoning with the historic, systemic, communal and personal threads that demand, question, and contemplate justice - altered our consciousness and thus, the frame of the workshop. More than ever, the container of our gathering, in virtual space, needed to be broad enough to contain the whole of our experience, name and unnamed, as we came together. Concepts of “lineage” in the millenia-old health and healing systems of Chinese medicine, and the traditions we’ve encountered through the hands and hearts of our elders and community aimed to connect us to the depths of our capacities to hold, heal and transform.

Donna Mah, TCM Practitioner

Illustration by Singha Hon depicting the 5 elements from our Lineage of Healing program with TCM practitioner Donna Mah.

“Stewarding W.O.W. Project’s first virtual anniversary programming series was really intriguing witnessing and experimenting with ways of creating and holding nonphysical space. It was a challenge trying to access and build a sense of connection over Zoom where the closest thing to feeling and getting a read for a group energy was entering gallery view mode.

There’s so much that you miss when you are limited to hosting in virtual space that gave me a heightened appreciation for the power of in person gathering. We certainly got familiar with navigating technical difficulties but the patience and continued enthusiasm of the community was a great source of encouragement. In spite of these challenges, there were some really magical moments where the physical isolation seemed to melt away to reveal a deeply felt connection, proving just what is possible in these circumstances.

Joy Freund, Summer Intern

Poet Franny Choi

NYC POC Healing Circle Seyi Adebanjo

The Black School Joseph Cuillier III

The Black School Mitchell Reece

NYC POC Healing Circle Charlie L’Strange

Affiliation Kay Ulanday Barret

Screenshot of featured guests and performers from Open Mic: Imagining Our Irresistible Futures

Screenshot from Movement as Grounding

“In a year full of memorable experiences and challenges, co-hosting the Movement as Grounding workshop with my sister Singha was one of the brightest moments. Im so grateful and honored to have taken part in W.O.W. Project’s courageous, collective journey toward healing and liberation.

In this year of isolation, like many, I‘ve realized how essential family, community, and connection is to leading a healthy and vital life. The creative process of developing the workshop with my sister led us deep into vulnerable and magical spaces through the trusting bond of sisterhood. We explored our unique lineage and experiences learning Taiji Quan and Qigong from our father, while cultivating our own healing rituals within an empowered and personal framework of divine femininity.

It means so much to me that I’m still in contact with several of the workshop participants who take my online classes. As a New Yorker living in Berlin, maintaining this connection to communities in the US broadens my perspective and brings a much needed feeling of “home” to my life abroad.

Thank you W.O.W.!!

Lingji Hon, Qigong Instructor ”