2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence
Wen-hao Tien, Unveiling Boston’s Chinatown
Photo credit: Jacyln Poeschl
Wen-hao Tien is a Cambridge-based visual artist and educator. Wen-hao grew up in Taiwan, with family roots in Shandong Province, China. She moved to the United States in 1988 to pursue graduate studies and ultimately became a naturalized citizen.
Early in her career, Wen-hao exhibited contemporary Chinese calligraphy and multi-media paintings. In recent years, she finds herself leaving the studio and to forage for materials and stories on community streets—which brought her to Boston Chinatown. She feels an urgency to interpret the shifting Chinatown cultural landscape, which has changed radically since she first encountered it in the 1990s.
While in residency at Pao Arts Center, Wen-hao will draw upon visual and audio inspirations from the Chinatown community to capture the nuances and textures of a place and a people in transition. She will also host workshops to engage in an exploration of a diverse and complex local diaspora and Asian American culture, past/present/future.
About the Artist-In-Residence Program:
Neighborhood engagement is the focus of Pao Arts Center’s residency program. One artist per year is selected to work with the center on a dynamic project that stimulates community dialogue in public spaces within and beyond the Center’s walls through artistic practice. The selected artist receives financial support, project resources, and office space at the Pao Arts Center.
Contact: Cynthia Woo
Supporter:
Pao Arts Center is supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, part of the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, an initiative of the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with major funding from the federal CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan from the National Endowment for the Arts.