For over thirty years, artist and activist Wen-ti Tsen has utilized his ideas and artistic practice to advocate for the local neighborhood and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. His latest project, Chinatown Worker Statues, pays tribute to the workers who have uplifted Boston Chinatown through their essential labor over the decades. The four sets of clay models Tsen has developed for the project represent four different workers from the Chinese immigrant community: the laundryman, the restaurant worker, the garment worker, and the grandmother tending a child. Each set of figures will serve as models in the creation of life-sized figures to be cast into bronze, to be permanently installed in prominent public spaces across Chinatown. These statues will offer a more complex and diverse reflection of our local histories and question who is celebrated through public art in our City.
The Chinatown Worker Statues project was initially funded by the Public Art for Spatial Justice grant from New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) and has been endorsed and fully funded as an artist-initiated project, with a full budget, by the Boston City's Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture, with approval from the Boston Arts Commission. It will be realized in the coming months and be installed for the world to see.
Opening Reception | Friday, March 31, 2023 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Registration is required, please register here.
Contact Leslie Condon, Visual Arts Manager, with questions Leslie.Condon@bcnc.net
About the Artist
Wen-ti Tsen (he/him) is a painter and public artist. He was born in China, grew up in Paris and London before coming to the U.S. to study art at Boston Museum School. Since the mid-1970s, after living and traveling for several years in different countries, he has been engaged in making art that explores cultural connections: with personal paintings and installations, large-scale public art sculptures, and working with communities to express social issues in various art forms. To learn more about Wen-ti’s work for the show, click here.