Pao Art Center's Experience Chinatown Arts Festival is in full swing, with live musical performances and murals around the neighborhood.
From September 1st to October 14th, murals are on display around locations in Chinatown, including Q Restaurant featuring art by Yixuan Zeng and Happy Lamb: Let's Eat, featuring art by Jialu Zou.
Muralist Nell Valle worked with 15 teens and students of all ages from Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) to paint the murals.
"It was really wonderful seeing their confidence grow and really research and understand the community around them in Chinatown and uplift the narratives they found out," she said on Boston Public Radio.
Some imagery in the murals includes people playing mahjong, a dragon superimposed on a backdrop of public transit, lion dances, food and lanterns.
Singer and songwriter Maddie Lam will be performing on September 30th as part of the festival's live show. She played two of her original songs, "High School Lovers" and her unreleased "Moon Flower" on BPR. She said that performing at the festival is significant to representation.
"It really matters to me because I feel like so much of my work as an artist is to help people who look like me know that we matter and that we're beautiful," she explained. "I think growing up, I never felt beautiful because I never saw anyone who looked like me. And representation is really important."
The center first opened in 2017 as Chinatown's first fine arts and Asian American and Asian immigrant cultural center. The land the center sits on, Parcel 24, was taken from Chinatown residents in the 1960s by the state for a highway as part of the Big Dig. Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) is a nonprofit developing affordable housing and put a bid in 2002 on the space that now holds the Pao Arts Center.
Its director, Cynthia Woo, explained that the annual festival is part the center’s goal of bringing together the Chinatown community.
"We're really looking at how to leverage arts, culture and creativity to support community needs to provide opportunities for connection, sense of belonging, learning, support for the community and the artists that are in our community," she said.
Experience Chinatown's live performances are scheduled on September 30th from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway. In the event of bad weather, it will be on October 1st.
