I’m Carolina A. Miranda, arts and urban design columnist at the Los Angeles Times, and it’s the weekend which means it’s time for the week’s essential culture news.
Asian American artists, now activists, push back against hate
From left: Tomie Arai, ManSee Kong and Betty Yu, founders of the Chinatown Art Brigade, an activist group, in New York, April 8, 2021. Newly spurred to action to combat bias, Asian American artists generate subway posters, leverage social media and stage Zoom webinars. Jingyu Lin/The New York Times.
by Aruna DSouza
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- Early in the pandemic, word started to travel among Asian American artists: Racist attacks were on the rise. Jamie Chan told a fellow artist, Kenneth Tam, about getting kicked out of an Uber pool ride by the driver who noticed her sniffling. Anicka Yi, an artist based in New York, called Christine Y. Kim, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to talk about being spit at on a Manhattan street; Kim, in turn, recounted being accosted in a Whole Foods parking lot.