Amanda 陳 Beard Garcia is a Chinese American muralist, illustrator, and brand designer based in Dracut, MA. Through portraiture and digital design, Amanda’s creative work reclaims and repaints her Chinese American identity by investigating the invisible history and heritage of her ancestors. She is co-founder and principal of Likemind Design, a creative studio with a mission to elevate the brands of independently-owned businesses “just like us,” as well as founder of Lucky Knot Arts, a collaborative community centering AANHPIs through pop-up arts programming on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

In my personal work documenting festivals across Boston, I seek to create images that capture the joy and vibrancy of my city. Chinatown’s Lunar New Year celebration is one part of this. The event welcomes people from all walks of life to share in the culture via lion dancing, food, and offerings to community members.

Heading into the year of the snake, I wanted to create a friendly companion to take throughout the year. The snake stares up at the first full moon of the lunar new year, as stars trickle down from above. It winds down the arm of the jacket, turns onto its belly and wraps onto the back of the jacket.

Brian Zhu is a Los Angeles native and photographer, who has made Boston his home for the last 10 years. His documentary-style work aspires to showcase the interplay between the lives of people and how their environment influences the everyday. Brian has spent the last five years documenting the Lion Dancers of the Asian American Cultural Center, formerly known as Nam Pai Academy, as they participate in the annual Lunar New Year parade in Boston’s Chinatown. With this work, Brian aims to showcase the cultural significance and pageantry of the parade, as well as the transient nature of Chinatown.

For me, the New Year always symbolizes change and rebirth. There’s an air of mystery to what the future holds, and I feel like snakes also have a mysterious quality to them. I largely create art as a means of dealing with trauma- so much of our histories were taken away, and creating art that pays tribute to these lost legacies feels like my way to connect with them. Whether it be digital or physical pieces- I strive to showcase the vibrant and powerful symbols of our culture. May these snakes watch over you in the New Year.

My work is a heartfelt homage to nature, shaped by my cross-continental upbringing in Chile and Singapore. Growing up surrounded by the vibrant landscapes of Chile, I was drawn to the movement of Magical Realism, which inspired my fascination with the fantastic hidden in the ordinary. This deepened in Singapore, with its rich tapestry of Southeast Asian folklore. I combine water-based paints with earthy materials like wood and mulberry paper to embody nature in my art. The cultural symbols of my environment and my favourite materials inform much of my work, blending my experiences with the spiritual regional dimensions.

This piece is meant to reflect a deeper exploration into my personal learning journey of Asian culture. As a Mexican artist, I've been fascinated by the many similarities in our cultures. I get a spark of joy when I understand history behind our shared core beliefs and values, and/or find a familiar flavors in our traditional foods. Since moving to the Boston area, I've been deeply moved by the immense support in such a diverse community. To me, this piece represents a step into further empathizing and understanding such a beautiful part of this city and it's community members.

Dajia Zhou is an illustrator and storyteller who loves creating funky, conceptual, and playful visuals. Her work focuses on themes of empathy, brought to life through bold illustrations and graphic narratives. Inspired by daily life, current events, gossip, and mass media, Dajia brings her own twist to the ordinary, turning it into something unexpected and exciting.

While in design school, I created a conceptual identity for Chinatown's Lunar New Year celebration. Visuals included scanned photos of orange peels and lettuce—produce flung around during lion dances to bring in good fortune. I wanted to use dynamic and unexpected imagery to show another side to the festivities to pique curiosity for the uninitiated. When I showed this work to a field professional, he said the scanned elements looked like ""garbage."" This comment always stuck with me—did my culture really look like garbage to others? Years later, I have revisited these motifs to reclaim my cultural identity, and show the beauty in it through an abstracted composition.

My name is Emily DeMauro and I am currently majoring in illustration at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA. I really enjoy painting with gouache and watercolors, and playing around with bright colors. In both my submitted pieces, I use my imagination to illustrate the traditional and unique ways my family and I celebrate the lunar new year. My mom always makes fa gao cakes and puts them around the house with hongbao. We also watch a historical Chinese soap opera marathon to celebrate. I took elements from these family traditions and combined them to make my submitted pieces.

IJ Chan (陳加恩) / SKETCHMONCHAN is a dancer, educator, graphic designer, visual artist and clothing designer from Boston, MA. She has dedicated her life to training and performing intensively in multiple dance genres, as well as bringing quality arts instruction to inner-city youth in Boston. IJ is a proud Chinese-American with roots in Hong Kong and Southern China and is interested in intersecting and exploring the Asian-American narrative in her own art. Since 2022, she has designed stickers and clothing based on the Chinese Zodiac animal of that year.

I am a Chinese-American immigrant who primarily uses acrylic paint, acrylic markers, and calligraphy pens as my medium. My artwork explores concepts of identity, intersectionality, and spirituality through the use of living beings as representation. My work is culturally based; growing up in diverse ethnic communities and navigating various economic realities, I was blessed to be exposed to different ways of thinking, perspective, and peoples’ lives. In my art, I explore the connection and individualization of these cultures, often mixing nuances from one into another, to capture the relationship between my multiple identities.

I am an artist and graphic designer based in Greater Boston, inspired by photography, travel, dance, and community. My work celebrates AAPI culture and fosters connection through creativity. Passionate about mental health and neurodivergence awareness, I use art to spark joy and self-expression while advocating for inclusive spaces. This exhibition offers a wonderful opportunity to share these values with Pao Arts Center’s vibrant community.

He is a scholar, poet, and calligrapher. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in late imperial Chinese Literature at Zhejiang University and a visiting scholar in the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department at Harvard University. His primary research focuses on Ming Dynasty literature, manuscript studies, and art history. From a young age, he has been dedicated to calligraphy and writing. His calligraphy was selected for the 2023 "Ink and Fragrance" National University Student Calligraphy and Painting Competition, and his poetry received the second prize in the Fourth "Yangtze River Cup" Chinese Poetry Contest.

ด๊งู D Ngu (Lucky Snake) The work submitted expresses Double Joy in Chinese culture in a form of Thai lucky charm using homonyms. D Ngu in Thai is a word that called snake’s gallbladder, the part that contains medicinal healing and brings courage and power. The word D is also homonyms for good and luck. In an old Thai culture, people use animals to tell a fortune, and snake is one of them. This snake coils itself into a word “good” brining good luck to the ones who see it.

Tenest Tang is a queer trans Chinese American. Immigrating to the US at the age of 8, Tenest struggled to balance their birth culture and the new environment. After many years, Tenest is pleased to return to their roots, continuing their study of Chinese brush painting which they had begun in China as a child.

Zhonghe (Elena) Li is a Cambridge-based multimedia artist whose work is deeply inspired by nature’s diversity and influenced by Taoist philosophy, emphasizing a sense of oneness with nature. Her practice is rooted in love for the nature and deep concern for environmental issues such as species extinction, climate change, and their resulting consequences for humanity’s future. Drawing from Taoist principles, Elena explores themes of interconnectedness, balance, and harmony, emphasizing that dualities are not always in conflict but are often deeply intertwined, relative, and mutually transformative. Committed to using art for social change, she led over 70 workshops for diverse communities.