Collaboration and Cultural Healing, An Afternoon of Tofu-Making
On Saturday, June 7, 2025, Pao Arts Center hosted the final activation of artist Ying Ye’s UnMonument Initiative public art project, Sprouts of Resilience: A Journey from Seed to Tofu. This project brought Chinese traditional aesthetics of gardening, street food tricycles, and collective food-making gatherings to activate Chinatown’s public spaces and foster cultural resilience and belonging. What had started from a mobile seedbed for growing sprouts matured into an afternoon of collaborative creation and cultural healing through the tasty medium of tofu.
The afternoon started with a demonstration and artist talk from the artist. Ye shared the context and her motivation to gather community in a collective tofu making process, and even included audience participation in her demonstration. As members from the crowd took turns in groups turning a traditional stone grinder to mill the soybeans, Ye detailed the joint effort that would be necessary to grind, filter, and cook the soybeans in this workshop meant to nurture the body and the soul.
As the workshop participants gathered into groups to create their own tofu, the intensive collaboration gave way to sharing stories and future aspirations. A participant shared how they hoped to take what they learned and grow soybeans in a community garden near them, and another how they hoped to take the flour as a by-product of the process to create scallion pancakes. In these snippets of their lives, participants shared their weekly mahjong nights with friends in the same sentences as they considered how much coagulant to add to the mixture, or what temperature the soy milk needed to be boiled to.
Each group then brought their tofu mixture to a giant tofu press. Collectively participants took turns sitting, jumping, and even planking on the press in a playful, but also physical act meant to press the liquid out of the tofu.
Through careful patience, intergenerational collaboration, intensive teamwork, and impeccable timing – or perhaps lack thereof – it was an afternoon of eating delicious tofu made from scratch and basking in the ability for collective food-making to foster community and belonging.
Related Programming
Sprouts of Resilience: A Journey from Seed to Tofu
Sprouts of Resilience: A Journey on the Tofu Tricycle | April 9 | 12:00 – 2:00 PM
Sprouts of Resilience: A Tofu Making Workshop | June 7 | 1:00 – 3:00 PM
About the Project
This project is part of Un-monument initiative, presented by Pao Arts Center, curated by Lani Asunción, in collaboration with the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture brought to you by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.