Installation: September 20 — October 9, 2024
Event: September 28, 2024, 12 — 2 PM
PUBLIC ART | PUBLIC HISTORY | CONVERSATION
A public artwork documenting the history of Providence’s Chinese communities and the city’s active policies of exclusion.
The Move on Chinatown
Installation: September 20 — October 9, 2024
Event: September 28, 2024, 12 — 2 PM
PUBLIC ART | PUBLIC HISTORY | CONVERSATION
A public artwork documenting the history of Providence’s Chinese communities and the city’s active policies of exclusion.
An IGNITE Series PVD+ Project
Curated by Aidan Choi ‘26, with mentorship by Jeffrey Yoo Warren (2023 Library of Congress Innovator in Residence)
The Move on Chinatown
Public Art Installation Starts on September 20, 2024 The Empire Street Windows of Trinity Repertory Company 201 Washington St. Providence, RI 02903
The Move on Chinatown is a pop-up artwork and archival oral research project aimed at documenting and highlighting the history of Providence’s Chinese communities, revealing the city’s active, dehumanizing, and exclusionary attitude towards these communities. Featured in public-facing windows, this artwork will make visible the erasure of Providence’s historic Chinese community in both the archive and the city’s urban memory.
Community Conversation & Celebration September 28, 2024, 12:00 — 2:00 PM Providence Public Library 150 Empire St. Providence, RI, 02903
A community conversation and celebration at Providence Public Library will take place on September 28, 2024, from 12-2 PM and will feature a discussion with the artists, researchers, and community members, as well as additional exhibited artworks and an educational zine created by Aidan Choi.
“The Move on Chinatown,” exhibit curated by Aidan Choi ’26, is an appeal both to memory and to physical legacy.
About the Artist
Courtesy of the artist Aidan Choi ('26)
Aidan Choi is a literary and visual arts creative from the San Francisco Bay Area. A rising junior concentrating in Ethnic Studies, Aidan is interested in forming creative historiographic methods to counter the systematic erasure of the histories of minority communities. With roots in San Francisco Chinatown, Aidan is passionate about preventing the further displacements of Chinatowns nationally as well as the many other ethnic enclaves facing the same fate. Aidan most recently represented Providence as part of the 2024 ProvSlam Spoken Word Poetry Team.
Project Advisors
Photo by Shawn Miller for Library of Congress
Jeffrey Yoo Warren (Primary Research Advisor / Mentor)
Jeffrey Yoo Warren (he/him) is a Korean American artist educator, illustrator, community scientist and researcher in Providence, RI, whose recent work combines ancestral craft practices and creative work with diasporic memory through virtual collaborative worldbuilding. He has spent years creating collaborative community science projects which decenter dominant culture in environmental knowledge production. Jeff is an educator with Movement Education Outdoors and AS220, and part of the New Old art collective with Aisha Jandosova, hosting art-making and storytelling events with older adults; he is also the 2023 Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress for his ongoing project Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational reconstructions of erased historic neighborhoods of color.
His current artistic practice investigates how people build identity and strength through their interactions with artifacts and histories, and the ways that objects can tell stories that people can be part of in the present.
Additional Advisors
John Eng-Wong: Research Advisor Professor Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor of History and American Studies: Research Advisor Thea Quiray Tagle: Advisor
Additional Panelists
Courtesy of the artist
Sophia Skiles
Sophia Skiles is a NYC-based theater actor and teacher. She has performed in productions directed by May Adrales, Chay Yew, Ralph Peña, Andrei Serban, Mary Zimmerman, Richard Foreman and David Herskovits, among others in regional theaters throughout the midwest and east coast. She was most recently seen in Michael Kahn's final production for Shakespeare Theatre Company in Ellen McLaughlin's new adaptation of Oresteia, for which her work in the ensemble earned a Helen Hayes nomination. Sophia is honored to draw on longstanding artistic affiliations with Ma-Yi Theater Company (http://ma-yitheatre.org) and National Asian American Theater Company (http://www.naatco.org). An experienced educator, Sophia has taught theater across a broad spectrum of learning communities, as a teaching artist in public K-12 schools to theater programs at Mount Holyoke College, SUNY Ulster and SUNY Purchase. Sophia is a dedicated community activist, having served among lead organizers for the Obie Award-winning Theaters Against War (THAW). Her work as two-term elected public official as Trustee of the New Paltz Central School District Board of Education focused on identifying and undoing systemic inequities, as well as supporting leadership and community among families of color and those with non-English home languages. BS, Performance Studies (Northwestern University), MFA, Acting (Columbia University). artEquity (https://www.artequity.org), 2016 cohort.
Courtesy of the artist
Yuanyuan (Angela) Feng
Yuanyuan (Angela) Feng is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Brown University. Prior to Brown, she worked as a lecturer in the English Department at Minzu University of China, Beijing. Her research interests include Chinese Diaspora in the Americas, Asian American community, politics and activism, Asian American literature, and public humanities.
John Eng-Wong
Visiting Scholar in Ethnic Studies
Brown Arts’ IGNITE Series uplifts the spirit of artistic collaboration across Brown, Providence, the Rhode Island region, and beyond. Ignite your creative curiosity through this multi-year series of programs, activations, interventions, and investigations.
