The metaphor of a radio station is my way of thinking about engaging diverse community and elevating unique voices, to make an intervention against social isolation. My curatorial work, particularly in the exhibitions INTERCESSION and A Sense of Place presence new aesthetic norms and cultural understandings carried by peoples shaped through voluntary and involuntary migrations. INTERCESSION, a photo-based show features contemporary artists focused on displacement, embedded portraiture, and street protest. A Sense of Place takes the literal site excavations of a historical southern California Chinatown as the basis of performative community engagements.

The design-a-thons, three in total across Riverside and San Bernardino counties, aim to uplift the incredible work of nonprofit organizations who clothe, feed, and shelter residents — by bringing them together with pro bono graphic designers. Their sophisticated marketing and branding services are usually not in budgets of struggling nonprofits. The digital graffiti mural project, produced by Black and Brown youth and printed at Judy Baca’s SPARC Graphics in Los Angeles, grew out of a collaboration between City of Riverside’s gang prevention unit “Project BRIDGE” and the University of California Riverside California Museum of Photography, where I served as Director of Digital Studio and Education Outreach.

All of these community projects I’ve shared carry the theme of weaving cultures, bringing people together to make magic. The Artspace New Haven Weaving Cultures project brought together high school students from Common Ground Urban Farm and Environmental Education Center in New Haven, Connecticut with artists from The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany. Staff shared the traditions of weaving in the cultures that many of the BIPOC students had come from — parallel to the contemporary woven fabrics and fiber-based work of Anni Albers. As a culmination of the mutual learning, the team engaged with the public in a weaving demonstration on an 8ft loom at the Open Source Festival 2021.