Fall Exhibits Open at Pao Arts Center
On Friday, October 27, over 50 people joined Pao Arts Center to celebrate the opening our fall 2023 exhibits Lunchbox Moments by Amie Bantz and Chinatown Worker Statues: A Statue in the Making by Wen-ti Tsen.
Sharing stories through Lunchbox Moments
“I remember feeling too white with my Korean friends and too Korean with my white friends and not quite knowing where I fit in the world. So, when I started art making, I began to explore those questions that I had. Who am I? Which roles do I fit into? When I thought about subject matter, and I really began to think about the first moments in my life where I felt weird, it always came back to food. ”
Lunchbox Moments Exhibit at Pao Arts Center, Photo by Mel Taing.
Lunchbox Moments, features over 65 lunchboxes and stories collected from Asian-Americans about their own experiences with the “lunchbox moment.” The term inspiring the name of the exhibit is a recently developed one, coined to describe the “shared experience of being judged for the cultural food Asia-American children bring to school,” according to Bantz. Food is often a connecting point for people of all cultures and identities. During the opening, gallery goers engaged with Bantz work, either by reading the featured “lunchbox moments” on display, contributing their own story to the exhibits interactive lunch bag display, or sharing their own stories in conversation with each other.
The exhibition also features stories and lunchboxes created by Bostonians in two workshops funded in part by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancements Weaving Well-Being Initiative.
Reconsidering Monuments with Chinatown Workers Statues: A Statue in the Making
“The whole concept is a little bit of counteracting the tradition of celebrating the warrior, the politician, the statesman. These are just workers. You don’t see them very often being celebrated and paid tribute to. So, I think for me it’s a very important thing I have been thinking about. How to do workers in a way that makes them like real life people. Not symbols of labor or of this industry, that industry, but really people who are working.”
Chinatown Worker Statues: A Statue in the Making Exhibit at Pao Arts Center, Photo by Mel Taing.
With Chinatown Worker Statues, Tsen asks the audiences to consider local histories of Chinatown. Through four statues: the laundryman, the seamstress/garment worker, the restaurant worker, and the grandparent taking care of a child. Tsen combines public art and community activism to honor the undervalued labor that has built Boston Chinatown from the ground up.
Last spring, Tsen exhibited all four clay statues at 40%-scale. For the next stage of his project, he aims to create a life size version of the laundryman statue before it is cast into bronze and installed permanently in the city, a lifelong dream of this 87-year-old artist. Wen-ti encourages people to come visit him while he works on this life-sized statue during his open-studio hours, listed on the Pao Arts Center website.
Opening Reception guests observe Lunchbox Moments at Pao Arts Center, Photo by Mel Taing.
Exhibiting artists
Amie Bantz, Wen-ti Tsen
Installation by
Diya Ghosh and Bithiah Holton
Chinese Translation by
Yuexing (Star) Sun
Related Dates at Pao Arts Center
While you can visit the exhibit any time during gallery open hours, during the following select hours, Tsen will work on-site, and invites visitors to see his progress in real time.
Hours through December 15, 2023
Thursdays: 4:00 – 6:00 pm
Fridays: 3:00 – 5:00 pm
Saturdays: 1:00- 4:00 pm
Chinatown Worker Statues: A Statue in the Making and Lunchbox Moments is currently on view at Pao Arts Center until February 17, 2024.
School tour are also available. Book today!