Laundry Rock: Histories of Boston’s Chinatown
Presented by the Pao Arts Center and the Chinese Historical Society of New England; the third seminar for the Tunney Lee lecture Series
Pao Arts Center and the Chinese Historical Society of New England invite you to our discussion with visual artist Wen-hao Tien, CHSNE Managing Director Brianna Allen, Shauna Lo, Assistant Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass Boston, and Eugenio Menegon, Associate Professor of History at Boston University as we explore the little-known histories of Chinese laundries in Boston Chinatown.
For first-wave Chinese immigrants in the mid-1800’s, laundries became a primary source of income and a significant part of Chinese American labor history. They remain a point of shared connection between many Chinese American families today.
How have these histories impacted Boston Chinatown, and what are the implications for current generations? During the discussion, we will be examining Tien’s piece, Laundry Rock, one of the works included in her culminating exhibition as Pao Arts Center’s 2020 Artist-in-Residence. The exhibit Wen-hao Tien: Home on Our Backs, is on view at Pao Arts Center’s website until June 26, 2021.
This event is sponsored by Tufts Medical Center, The Boston Foundation, South Cove Community Health Center, and the Margaret Wong Family Foundation.
March 13th, 2:00 PM EST
About the Artist
Wen-hao Tien is a Cambridge-based visual artist and educator. Wen-hao grew up in Taiwan, with family roots in Shandong Province, China. She moved to the United States in 1988 to pursue graduate studies and ultimately became a naturalized citizen.
Early in her career, Wen-hao exhibited contemporary Chinese calligraphy and multi-media paintings. In recent years, she finds herself leaving the studio and to forage for materials and stories on community streets—which brought her to Boston Chinatown. She feels an urgency to interpret the shifting Chinatown cultural landscape, which has changed radically since she first encountered it in the 1990s.
