Artist Statement
I am a socially engaged multimedia artist, filmmaker, photographer, educator and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. My interdisciplinary multimedia work integrates documentary film, photography, collage, installation, new media platforms and community-infused approaches into my practice. I have used a mix of creative approaches that include installations, large-scale projections, interactive mapping, story circles, video, photography, multimedia storytelling, mixed media collage, walks, augmented reality, 360 video, and other new media platforms. I approach art and social justice issues through my own personal lens, family narrative and community’s history. My artistic practice is rooted in my own identity as a Chinese-American woman who is a daughter of immigrant garment workers, driven by social justice principles. I draw inspiration from my family’s experience with immigration, displacement, labor exploitation and anti-Asian racism in the U.S. My work highlights personal stories that provide a portal into our collective narrative and our community’s search for justice, belonging and dignity. The themes of urban gentrification, the immigrant experience, racial injustice, labor rights, transgender equality and anti-militarism are interwoven throughout my work.
Longer Statement: I am a socially engaged multimedia artist integrating documentary film, photography, new media platforms and community-infused approaches into my practice. My documentary and multi-media work is shaped and influenced by my direct experience as a daughter raised by garment worker immigrant parents in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Upon arrival from Hong Kong over forty-five years ago, my parents toiled under sweatshop conditions. This upbringing undoubtedly formed who I am as an artist today. In my artwork, I approach social issues through my own personal lens, family narrative and community’s history. My work has explored issues ranging from housing equity, labor rights, immigrant justice, transgender equality and anti-militarism. In the last five years, I have developed personal and collectively driven cultural projects that address the displacement and gentrification in NYC through telling stories of those most impacted: immigrants, the working class and communities of color. I have used a mix of creative approaches that include large-scale projections, interactive mapping, story circles, video, photography, multimedia storytelling, walks, augmented reality and other new media platforms. My site-specific multimedia art projects have addressed anti-gentrification in neighborhoods such as Manhattan’s Chinatown, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and Charlotte, North Carolina’s historically African-American West End.
Since the mid 90’s, I have been involved in community organizing and activism in New York City. Through this direct engagement, I have unique access to the stories of the communities I portray in my art and for that reason, it’s important to me to tell these stories in an ethical and responsible manner. For over 20 years, I have been committed to using art, media and technology as tools to elevate people’s stories of resilience and resistance. My artwork provokes people to think about their own role in society and see themselves as agents of change, while also educating and uplifting them. I truly believe in the power of art to change hearts and minds and provoke people to take action.
In 2015, I co-founded and continue to co-lead Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB), an Asian-American women-led artist collective working with CAAAV’s Chinatown Tenants Union to launch “Here to Stay” that uses large-scale outdoor projections, new media and augmented reality to address themes of gentrification, resilience and resistance in Chinatown. The artwork and projections were co-created with the Chinatown immigrant tenants and residents through an eight-week workshop series that I co-led. The process included collecting oral histories, story circles, resident-led walks, photography, audio recordings, community counter mapping, and video documentation. The workshops culminated into cultural production materials, images and messages that were then projected onto buildings and public landmarks in Chinatown as evening events. In 2018, I helped develop the next phase of our project which involves using a mobile augmented reality application to unlock the stories of people most directly impacted by displacement in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Aside from film and video, my social change message has been expressed through various mediums that include web-based projects, photography, and public art installation. Regardless of the medium I am working with, the theme and message is consistent. Through my direct involvement in community activism, I have access to people’s stories and can provide a platform for their voices to be heard. It’s important to preserve the integrity and respect people’s experiences and stories therefore its vital that my subjects feel a part of the process. I am continuously looking for innovate ways to incorporate different methods of storytelling and visual mediums into my work.
Click HERE for highlights of Betty Yu’s CV (email her for full CV)
Recognitions / Awards / Residences:
Recipient of the 2021 En Foco Media Work In Progress (WIP) Fund Recipient of the 2020-2021 Asian American Arts Alliance Virtual Residency.
Recipient of the 2021 Film and Virtual Reality (VR) Residency with China Residencies
Recipient of the 2020 En Foco Photography Fellowship.
Recipient of the 2020 Santa Fe Art Institute Artist Residency
Recipient of the 2020 Stoneleaf Retreat Artist Residency
Recipient of the 2019-2020 Pratt Institute Taconic Fellowship for Faculty to further develop “(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park”.
Recipient of the 2019-2020 Laundromat Project’s Create Change Residency for Chinatown Art Brigade.
Recipient of the 2019-2020 International Center of Photography Director’s Scholarship.
Recipient of the 2018 Mellon Engaged Scholarship Fund to support Chinatown Art Brigade’s Placekeeping – Here to Stay.
2018 Grantee of Wave Farm’s Media Arts Assistance Fund for the distribution of “Three Tours”.
2018 Summer Artist-in-Resident of SPACE on Ryder Farm in NYC.
2018 Fourth Arts Block Artist-in-Residency for Chinatown Art Brigade
2018 Residency with The Laundromat Project for Chinatown Art Brigade
Recipient of the 2017 Aronson Journalism for Social Justice Documentary Award and given an honorable mention in the New York Times for Three Tours.
2017-2018 Fellow of the Intercultural Leadership Institute, a national fellowship for arts & culture leaders.
Recipient of the 2017 Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice for Chinatown Art Brigade
2016 SOAPBOX Award in Community Arts.
Selected as a 2017 artist-in-resident at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City.
Recipient of the 2016 Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art. for Chinatown Art Brigade's "Here to Stay" Project
Recipient of a 2016 Brooklyn Arts Council Grant for “Celebrating Our Ancestors at Sunset”, an interdisciplinary arts project
Selected as a 2015 "Cultural Agent" for the U.S. Department of Arts & Culture (USDAC), a national non-profit people powered arts network.
"The Garment Worker" was one of 20 projects exhibited during the 2014 Tribeca Institute Interactive as a part of the Film Festival in NYC.
Awarded a seed grant from 2013 Art Matters for “Three Tours”, an interactive media project that highlights the stories of Iraqi civilians and Iraqi war veterans whose lives have been profoundly transformed by their direct experience with war-related trauma.
Selected as an Artist-in-Residency for the 2012 Laundromat Project’s Create Change program and grant to exhibit show
Judge for the Best Shorts of the 2010 International Asian American Film Festival
Recipient of $25,000 Paul Robeson Fund for a documentary film project about garment workers in 2006.
Recipient of the 1999 Union Square Award for grassroots activism.
Recognized as a young and dedicated community organizer in the New York Daily’s News Millennium Edition as one of the “21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century.”
PUBLICATIONS:
Click Below for Betty Yu’s published writing (selects):
“Act of Remembering” for “Survivance” by E-Flux and Guggenheim Museum
Betty Yu
Bio
Betty Yu is an award winning socially engaged multimedia artist, photographer, filmmaker, educator, and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. Yu integrates documentary film, installation, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice. Ms. Yu's documentary "Resilience" about her garment worker mother fighting sweatshop conditions screened at national and international film festivals including the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival. Yu's multi-media installation, "The Garment Worker" was featured at Tribeca Film Institute's Interactive Showcase. In 2020, she worked with housing activists create "Resistance in Progress" a multi-media installation featured at Queens Museum. Betty recently had her first solo exhibition, "(DIs)Placed in Sunset Park" at Open Source Gallery in September 2018 in New York City. This work was also included in 2019 BRIC’s Biennial.
Her work has also been exhibited and screened at the Brooklyn Museum, NY Historical Society, Tenement Museum, Artists Space/ISP Whitney Museum, Apexart, Photoville, Pace University Art Gallery, Transmitter Gallery, 601 Artspace, Five Myles, and Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, No Longer Empty, Old Stone House, and SPACE Gallery . Ms. Yu has been awarded artist residencies and fellowships with institutions such as the Laundromat Project, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Asian American Arts Alliance, En Foco, Skidmore College’s Documentary Storytellers' Institute, KODA Lab, and Santa Fe Art Institute, Stone Leaf, Pratt Institute, China Residencies, Flux Factory and the Intercultural Leadership Institute, and SPACE at Ryder Farm.
In 2015, Betty co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing. Betty received the 2016 SOAPBOX Artist Award from Laundromat Project. Betty won the 2017 Aronson Journalism for Social Justice Award for her film "Three Tours" about U.S. veterans returning home from war in Iraq and their journey to overcome their PTSD. Ms. Yu is a 2017-18 fellow of the Intercultural Leadership Institute. Betty had her curatorial debut in the Fall 2020 as she presents “Imagining De-Gentrified Futures”, an exhibition that will feature artists of color, activists and others along with her own work at Apex Art in Tribeca, NYC.
Betty is an adjunct assistant professor teaching new media, film theory, art and video production at various colleges in New York City, including The New School, John Jay College, Pratt Institute Marymount Manhattan College and Hunter College. Ms. Yu's films have been screened and featured at the Directors Guild of America, Sydney International Transgender Film Festival, MESA Film Festival, andVisual Communications Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film & Video Festival. Betty is a 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow for Socially Engaged Art for her project with Chinatown Art Brigade. Ms. Yu has received numerous grants for our work including support from Art Matters Foundation, Asian Womens Giving Circle, Brooklyn Arts Council, Wave Farm Media Arts and the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media.
In addition Betty Yu sits on the boards of Third World Newsreel and Working Films, two progressive documentary film organizations. She also sits on the advisory board of More Art, an arts organization promoting public art in the community. Ms. Yu holds a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.
Betty has close to 20 years of community, media justice and labor organizing experience. Ms. Yu's organizing recognitions include being the recipient of the Union Square Award for grassroots activism and a semi-finalist of the National Brick "Do Something" Award for community leadership in Chinatown. Betty was a 2015 Cultural Agent with the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) a people powered network. She organized "City of Justice: New Year, New Futures" an anti-displacement interactive social justice, arts & activism event that featured 10 art, new media, culture and performance stations at Brooklyn Museum's First Saturday with thousands in attendance.
Her work has received coverage in outlets including New York Times, HBO VICE News Tonight, i-D Vice Media, Art Forum, ARTNews, Sinovision, Hyperallergic, E-Flux, La Belle Revue Art Journal & Studio International.
Exhibitions/Screenings (Selected):
“Resistance in Progress”, highlighting gentrification in Flushing, Queens was part of a group exhibition “After the Plaster Foundation or Where Can We Live? at the Queens Museum from Sept. 2020 to Feb 2021 and received a favorable review in the New York Times.
“Intimate/Distant”, a new interactive media and photography project exhibited as part of International Center of Photography’s end of the year show, entitled “How the Light Gets In”, 2020.
Exhibition of “In/visible Labor in Chinatown” and “The Garment Worker” at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine in Spring 2021.
(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park Photo Series was featured in En Foco’s 2020 Photography Fellowship Exhibition entitled Your Reflection, This Memory and will be featured on the cover of “Nueva Luz” Photography Magazine.
Curated and showed personal work at Apex Art in NYC’s Tribeca in March 2020. "Imagining De-gentrified Futures" exhibited November 4th - December 19th, 2020.
“Resistance in Progress” about displacement and gentrification about Flushing, Queens on view. part of “After the Plaster Foundation or Where Can We Live” at the Queens Museum (Sept 16th 2020 - Jan. 17th 2021)
Selected to be a creative collaborator for CityLore’s 2020 Lower East Side Guide Exhibited In/visible Labor in Chinatown, a multimedia experience that honors the current and past labor stories of immigrant workers in New York City’s Chinatown at Bliss Gallery at Bronx Community College in Bronx, NY in September 2019.
"In/visible Labor in Chinatown" and "The Garment Worker" exhibited in Punctures Show at Squeaky Wheel Art Film and Media Art Center, Buffalo New York January 2020.
Exhibiting new work, In/Visible Labor in Chinatown at Reclaiming the Hall exhibition at Hall of Fame on the Bronx Community College in September 2019.
Presented at the 2019 International Conference on the Arts in Society in Lisbon, Portugal.
Exhibited (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park and gave artist talk at NYU’s 2019 Culture Mapping Conference.
Exhibited (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park at BRIC’s Biennial from February to April 2019 which received honorable mention in the New York Times.
Working Stories, a public art installation featuring six street signs that honor workers and the labor history of those who worked around the Highline neighborhood will be part of the opening of The Spur, the last section of the High Line that extends east along 30th St. and terminates above 10th Ave in April 2019.
Chinatown Not for Sale with Chinatown Art Brigade will be exhibited at Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, Washington in May 2019.
Exhibited (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park, 4-week solo show in September 2018 at Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn, NYC.
Three Tours, was selected to be screened at ArtsQuest, as part of a documentary film series in partnership with Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA on January 28th, 2018.
Special “Veterans Day: Reframed” screening and panel discussion was organized for Three Tours in NYC on November 14th, 2018. It was also written about in the New York Times.
Three Tours, 50-min documentary about U.S. veterans returning from Iraq screening at The Guild in Albuquerque and Chicago in March and August, 2017
Exhibited (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park: The Future of Sunset Park: Through the Voices of Immigrant Stories in June 2017 at the Case Gallery in Saratoga, New York.
Exhibited The Future of Sunset Park: Through the Voices of Immigrant Stories at ISCP Open Studio Show April 21-22nd in NY.
Co-Creator, A People’s Monument to Anti-Displacement Organizing (2016) an interactive display and video highlighting gentrification in Brooklyn is part of the 3rd Wave of the AgitProp! Show at the Brooklyn Museum.
Curated City of Justice: New Year, New Futures where thousands of visitors engaged in an interactive social justice, arts & activism event that featured 10 art, culture and performance stations at Brooklyn Museum for their Target Free First Saturday on January 2nd, 2016.
Letter from Wei Xui Qing, a short memory collage based on my vivid memories and a letter from a 16-year old Chinese garment worker, was an official selection for the 2015 CUNY Asian American Film Festival.
WORKShifts: Race, Labor and Defining Ourselves, an interactive installation that merges my family’s immigrant work experiences and the painful history of economic racism of the Chinese community in the U.S. , was part of No Longer Empty’s Through the Parlor 5-week Exhibit in NYC’s Chinatown.
Against the Grain, a short documentary about a Nigerian immigrant, cultural organizer artist who is undergoing testosterone therapy treatment screened at the 2011 LA Transgender Film Festival, the 2012 Philadelphia Transhealth Conference, Multi-Campus National Campus Tour, and the 2013 Sydney Transgender International Film Festival.
Presented Hood Hub, an interactive model for radical media at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in February 2012.
The Garment Worker, an interactive installation was exhibited as part of the 2012 Laundromat Project Artist-in-Residency Program and at the Black Box Gallery at Hunter College.
Rising From Our Hardship, a 30-minute documentary about workers injured on the job screened at May Day Film Festival and the Native American Indian Community House in 2005.
Resilience, a short film on sweatshop conditions had its US debut at the 2000 Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival in New York and its’ International debut at the 2001 Mayworks Festival in Toronto, Canada. Resilience was also screened at the Directors Guild of America for the 2002 Visual Communications Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film & Video Festival.
Award winning photograph was on display and portfolio was exhibited in a running video component at the International Center of Photography,
Photography book addressing racism was displayed in the George Eastman Kodak Museum.