joy mao x The W.O.W. Project
dear reader, From January-July 2022, I returned to The W.O.W. Project as Artist-in-Residence for a second year. During this time, I had the opportunity to pilot a way of designing and constructing clothing which—until now—had only been a dream. It started with a simple question: how can we make clothes in a way which sustains our community? After grounding my inquiry in Chinatown’s rich history of garment work, I initiated a creative process which centered intergenerational collaboration and learning. Together with my artistic partner, Lorraine Lum, we created 八宝粥 Ba Bao Zhou, a capsule collection of simple, wearable garments inspired by the everyday abundance of Chinatown. 八宝粥 Ba Bao Zhou, or “Eight Treasures Porridge” is a traditional
Chinese sweet stew made from a variety of herbal treasures, such as lotus seeds, mung beans, and red peanuts. It is a beloved symbol of cultural abundance and community nourishment. Every person who contributed to this collaborative project has made the work more beautiful, functional, and meaningful to our community. Thank you for being on this journey with us. I believe this is just the beginning, and that there is much work yet to be done—together. Much love, joy mao July 2022
a note from W.O.W. Since its inception, The W.O.W. Project’s Artist Residency program has sought to support generative collaborations between artists and W.O.W.’s community in Chinatown. Over the past six years, we have watched the program take shape around each artist-in-residence, deepening our belief that art plays a vital role in strengthening relationships at the intersection of place and politics. Coming out of Joy’s first year as Artist-in-Residence, we felt moved by her questions about how we honor the labor and legacy of garment workers past. It only felt fitting to invite Joy back for a second year. We started, as always, in the basement of 26 Mott Street where W.O.W. is housed. With our collaborators, we spilled into the neighborhood’s streets, Columbus Park, garment workers’ homes and outside their old garment factories-turned-luxury-hotels. Hearing from women who transformed U.S. labor history and shaped the very fabric of Chinatown, it became clear that these stories were not just stories to share over meals and workshops—but that they were and continue to be political, enduring, and necessary to help us remain committed to the collective work of building the future we envision for our communities. We are thrilled to present Ba Bao Zhou as a labor of love, a project that has only been possible because of how many hands have touched it. It has been so exciting to witness the growth of this program alongside Joy’s practice as an artist and fashion designer. We are grateful for Joy’s generous and thoughtful spirit grounding us in the two years we’ve worked together, and to our project collaborators who have contributed their time, insight, creativity, and stories throughout this process. Ba Bao Zhou is a testament to the magic of intergenerational work, which roots us in the legacies we come from and opens the door to create, grow, and build even more. Thank you for doing this work with us. Denise, Cocoro, and The W.O.W. Project team
our process Together with The W.O.W. Project and its Resist Recycle Regenerate (RRR) youth cohort, we imagined a creative process which allowed clothing design to be a vessel for community care. We grounded this process in a series of educational workshops with guest speakers from the community: 1: Contextualizing, with May Ying Chen 2: Observing, with Mengwen Cao 3: Reflecting, with Mengwen Cao 4: Carving, with Joy Mao and Lorraine Lum 5: Printing, with Joy Mao and Lorraine Lum Over four months, these workshops invited participants to be active collaborators in the development of our Ba Bao Zhou collection. We cultivated various art-making skills, nurtured intergenerational bonds, and encouraged each other to investigate how creative actions can be guided by historical context, personal experience, introspection, and community engagement. As the workshops unfolded, so did our collection.
Process photography by Renee Chang and Echo Chen
workshop 1: contextualizing with May Ying Chen
Our first workshop grounded us in our community’s history. Community elder and former International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) leader, May Ying Chen, spearheaded our discussion—using the history of New York’s garment industry as an entry point into understanding patterns of Asian immigration, key historical moments, and the interconnectivity of industry, culture, and community.
May led our group to Columbus Park, the site of the historic 1982 Garment Workers’ Strike, when over 20,000 garment workers— mostly Chinese immigrant women—marched through the streets of Chinatown in protest of low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions. Following our excursion, we constructed a collaborative timeline by asking ourselves: What are key moments in our personal and family histories, and how are these moments contextualized within the histories of our communities? How does our shared past influence our experience of the present, and prepare us for designing our collective futures?
workshop 2: observing with Mengwen Cao
Mengwen Cao is a photographer, artist, and educator using care and tenderness to explore spaces between race, gender, and cultural identity.
During our second workshop, Meng spoke about their unique approach to photography, and invited our cohort to consider how image-making can be a tool for observing the world around us with respect, love, and care. We reframed photography as an active, collaborative process: While you are observing others, are others not also observing you? How does the way you show up in your environment influence the environment itself ? What is the relationship between a photographer and their subject?
We explored Chinatown, using our cameras to observe the life around us. Our photos documented moments of everyday abundance: a child tenderly holding their guardian’s hand, a restaurant worker transporting bags of rice, watermelons huddled in a window.
Photos by Cocoro Kitagawa & Kaitlyn Lee
We printed our favorite photographs and asked: How does this image make you feel? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find?
workshop 3: reflecting with Mengwen Cao
During our third workshop, we used drawing as a medium for continuing our inquiry. Can the practice of drawing also help anchor and convey a loving gaze? Through a series of exercises, we explored how the act of drawing can be cultivate a harmonious partnership between body and mind. We each paired up with a partner and practiced blind contour drawing—to free ourselves from our own expectations, and allow these intimate moments to cultivate intuition, openness, and trust.
Blind contour drawing of Sophia, by Kaitlyn Lee
Blind contour drawing of Chinatown by Vivian Yi
an intergenerational partnership Joy Mao and Lorraine Lum began working together during Joy’s 2021 artist residency at The W.O.W. Project. Joy’s 2021 project, Bai Jia Yi, centered Chinatown’s history of garment labor. During her research phase, Joy was connected with a number of Chinatown’s past and present garment workers, including Lorraine—who has worked as a patternmaker and technical designer for over 40 years. Joy and Lorraine quickly connected over their shared experiences in the industry, complementary personalities and skills, and fondness for hot dogs and tea eggs.
During Joy’s 2022 residency, she and Lorraine became artistic partners in the development of the Ba Bao Zhou collection, working closely on all stages of the process including research, design, patternmaking, and construction. Their partnership is a testament to art’s ability to bridge generations and build foundations for community collaboration and care.
Orchid, designed and carved by Lorraine Lum, inspired by a gift from her daughter, Mei
drawing, carving, painting, printing The reflection, discussion, and experimentation of the first phases of our process led us to develop a technique which would become central to the creation of our collection. We combined the processes of drawing, carving, painting, and printing to develop a method of imparting images on fabric. We designed motifs with personal and cultural significance, transformed these designs into hand-carved blocks, and used these blocks to create one-of-a-kind prints on white linen fabric. The process yielded prints with unique hand-painted textures— capturing an individual action, a singular moment in time.
workshops 4-5: carving and printing with Joy Mao and Lorraine Lum
During our fourth and fifth workshops, we invited our participants to draw, carve, and print motifs of their own design. This process produced an array of motifs of varying sizes, subjects, and inspirations, and became the foundation for the first edition of our community motif library.
our motif library
Contributors: Joy Mao, Lorraine Lum, Kaitlyn Lee, Vivian Yi, Cocoro Kitagawa, Bridget Li, Mischelle Moy, Denise Zhou, Sophia Kschwendt, Singha Hon, Shaina Yang, Ying Chen, Sueann Leung
Which motifs speak to you and why?
What are your own symbols of everyday abundance?
personalization While our community collaborators designed and carved their motifs, Joy and Lorraine developed a collection of five simple silhouettes for the collection: dress, jumpsuit, top, pant, jacket. From these five core garments and 25 motifs, we worked with the project’s art director and stylist, Sueann Leung, to design a special set of garments for a collection photoshoot.
Sueann Leung is a New York-based costume designer and stylist using design to humanize and respectfully represent marginalized groups—especially queer people of color. Together with Joy and Lorraine, they helped to select and place motifs for each subject based on their individual styles and stories.
collection portraits Our collection photoshoot celebrated three groups of women with roots in Chinatown’s history of garment labor. Each subject was photographed in a location significant to their family’s garment history, and styled in customized pieces from the Ba Bao Zhou collection. These intimate portraits allowed the clothes we created to facilitate connection and remembrance.
Art Direction by Sueann Leung Photography by June Kim Videography by Shirley Chan Production by Denise Zhou, Cocoro Kitagawa, Angela Cai, Mei Lum
Alice Ip came to the New York in 1976 with two daughters and a son, when she was 27 years old. She worked in several of Chinatown’s garment factories before becoming an organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) Local 23-25 six years later, representing workers from 72 garment shops.
Left: Alice speaking at the historic 1982 Garment Workers’ Strike in Columbus Park, when over 20,000 garment workers gathered to defend their rights (Image courtesy of the ILGWU archives) Above: Alice photographed in Columbus Park by June Kim, 40 years after playing her pivotal role in the historic 1982 Strike
Alice Ip with her ILGWU pins and umbrella Photographed in Columbus Park by June Kim
Jade Li and her daughter, Mischelle Moy Photographed at 1-3 Crosby Street by June Kim
“1-3 Crosby Street was one of a handful of locations in Manhattan Chinatown that my parents and grandparents worked in when they first immigrated to New York City in the 1980s to early 1990s. When walking around with my mom to check out the locations a week prior to the shoot, she learned (to my disappointment, but to her astonishment) that a lot of the buildings had been long replaced by fancy hotels or high-end designer stores. I remember when we would start commuting to Chinatown when I was just a toddler, with me being dropped off at a nursery school on Grand St & Bowery, while she went to work in a garment factory building nearby. My parents and grandparents would be in those factories making buttons, zippers, and multiples of other garment pieces. I even remember spending time at one of them in Brooklyn when they moved from factory to factory. Thanks to the shoot and Joy’s residency, my mom re-experienced these old memories of when I was just her first and only child, and I got to hear more in-depth about what my family had to do upon immigrating to the United States. I think the shoot brought me and my mom even closer, with June’s super intimate portraits and Joy and Lorraine’s fittings, and my mom seeing me as a reminder of how long she’s been living here. My mom still works as a patternmaker to this day (with a reputation of her own!) so her immigrant roots are never forgotten, and I hope to help keep these memories alive.” Mischelle Moy June 2022
“When I spoke to my mom about how she got involved in the garment industry, she told me it began with a nudge from Po, my grandmother. She studied fashion design in college, tried her hand at running her own patternmaking business, and soon took on a full time job at a large fashion brand until 2020. My mom’s homecoming to her old basement studio these past two years, collaborating with Joy, has been beautiful to witness. The rich, intergenerational, artistic partnership that they have cultivated shines through in their breathtaking collection. Through the process of making, Joy quietly guided and invited my mom to investigate her own journey in the fashion industry in connection with Chinatown’s garment history. I am not sure if my mom really has had the chance to slow down in her career, take a step back, and realize that she, too has a role in what the future of garment work rooted in Chinatown’s legacy can look like. The photoshoot of four generations of our family embracing each other in the streets of Chinatown donned with Joy and my mom’s collection embody the tight-knit connection between the history and cultural fabric of our community. To my mom: I hope these photos are reminders of a new beginning, a new chapter that begins with you weaving every part of yourself into the clothes you make at home, here in Chinatown.” Mei Lum June 2022
Above: Nancy (age 92) and Ava (age 2) photographed by June Kim in front of their family’s 97-year-old porcelain shop at 26 Mott Street
about joy Joy Mao is a Chinese American artist and fashion designer based in Brooklyn, using clothing as a medium for illuminating the bonds between self and society. How do our clothes shape the way we understand ourselves, our relationships with others, and the ways we move through our worlds? How can clothing support and sustain life, rather than exploit it? Through the lens of garment work, Joy’s practice highlights and celebrates the critical labor that people engage in, both individually and in community with others, to create things with care. This kind of labor—often overlooked and undervalued—comes from a deep and transformative place of love. Joy designs and constructs intimate spaces, starting with our clothes, to support those who work to build a more just and beautiful world.
about W.O.W. The W.O.W Project is a femme, queer, and trans led communitybased initiative that is working to sustain ownership over Manhattan Chinatown’s future by growing, protecting and preserving Chinatown’s creative culture through arts, culture and activism. Our core mission is to create space for conversations to happen across language barriers and generational gaps to actively shape the future of Chinatown. Our projects include artist residencies, youth programs, public artworks and events, and mutual aid.
made with love, together Joy Mao - Artist-in-Residence Lorraine Lum - Artistic Partner The W.O.W. Project Mei Lum - Executive Director Denize Zhou - Program Manager Cocoro Kitagawa - Program Coordinator Aishvarya Arora, Angela Cai & Tiffany Wang Resist Recycle Regenerate Kaitlyn Lee Tiffany Huang Christina Duan Sophia Kschwendt Serena Yang Bridget Li Vivian Yi Aurora Hom Community Contributors May Ying Chen Mengwen Cao Alice Ip Mischelle Moy & Jade Li Wing On Wo Family Production Team Sueann Leung - Art Director / Stylist June Kim - Portrait Photographer Renee Chang & Echo Chen - Process Photographers Shirley Chan - Videographer Sarula Bao & Endless Editions - Riso Printer Special Thanks Abrons Art Center Gary Lum & Sandra Lee Ying Chen & Shaina Yang