Imagine Safety
Location: Mobile throughout Chinatown
Dates: July 20, 2024 and September 28, 2024 (during our Experience Chinatown festival)
Everyone deserves to feel safe in the neighborhood where they live and work. Joanna Tam honors the resilient history of Boston Chinatown residents and inspires the community to continue its civic engagement tradition.
Imagine Safety is a participatory project that amplifies the voices of Chinatown community members on the issue of safety. It provides a space to heal from the impacts of environmental injustice, highway development, institutional expansion, and housing insecurity through the sharing and imagining of what a safe Chinatown looks like.
See below for community members’ responses to the prompt, “Safety to me is…” This book is available to view at Pao Arts Center as part of the exhibit, Celebrations of Perseverance: Public Art in Chinatown 2024-2025. Book design by Marcel Marcel.
Meet the Artist
Joanna Tam
Joanna Tam is a Hong Kong-born, Boston-based visual artist. Using video, photography, performance, text and installation, her work examines the issues of migration, construction of national identity as well as the notion of home. Joanna’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues in Boston, New York, Kansas City, Hong Kong, Istanbul, York, UK and Idar-Oberstein, Germany among others. Her projects were awarded Best Art Film at Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, UK, People’s Choice Award and Third Prize at Prix de la Photographie, Paris.
Photo credit: Aaron Wan
About the Project
Imagine Safety is part of the Un-monument Initiative presented by Pao Arts Center, curated by Lani Asunción and in collaboration with the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. It is brought to you by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
