TOMIE ARAI

^{(b. 1949, New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY)}

Tomie Arai is a New York-based public artist whose practice spans printmaking, installation, and site-specific public works. She has created permanent and temporary commissions for Creative Time, the US General Services Administration Art in Architecture Program, NYC Percent for Art, the MTA Arts for Transit Program, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the New York City Board of Education. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Library of Congress, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, among others. Arai is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She co-founded the Chinatown Art Brigade in 2015.

Children’s Art Carnival affiliation: Teaching Artist, 1986–87

Stories from La Colonia China, 2003

Wood, silkscreen, and metal hinges
Dimensions vary; approx. 48 × 180 in.
Courtesy of the artist

During her time at the Carnival, Asian-American artist Tomie Arai found her worldview expanding as a result of engaging with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

“Working at the Carnival and being accepted into the Carnival community, and being exposed to and learning so much about African-American history and culture through that experience…really shaped, I think, the work that I went on to do,” she recalled.

Over a decade later, inspired in part by her Carnival experience, Arai interviewed Chinese families who had immigrated to the United States from Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Peru. Many identified as Afro-Asian and are represented in this artist’s book through portraits and interview excerpts, conducted in English, discussing the complexity of their identities, past experiences, and dreams for the future. The result, as Arai wrote, is a collection that foregrounds and honors underrepresented “‘voices from ‘La Colonia China;’ from the Chinatowns, Barrio Chinas and the global mix of neighborhoods, languages and cultures that can be found across the world.”

Voices: Amelia Lau Carling, Fabiana Chiu-Rinaldi, Albert Chong, Marie Chong Damato, Essud Fungcap, Wilfred Lai, Aurora Len, Rose Lowe, Yrmina Eng Menendez, Lina Rodriguez, Eduoard Wah Ho, George and Inez Yap, Audrey Wong, Joyce Wong, Yvonne Wong. Poem: Horn Child by Ayow Degannes.