Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and activist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya is currently in the process of creating a site-responsive mural as part of her installation, Very Asian Feelings, inside the gallery of Asia Society Texas Center.
Painting began on Friday, February 18 and will continue through Saturday, February 26. The mural-in-progress is open to the public for in-person viewing, with COVID safety protocols in place. Remaining times to witness the artist at work include:
- Thursday, February 24, 11am – 6pm
- Thursday, February 24, 6 – 7:30pm at an Artist Reception
- Friday, February 25, 11am – 6pm
- Saturday, February 26, 10am – 6pm
Phingbodhipakkiya’s completed mural and installation will remain on view through July 3, 2022 as part of Making Home: Artists and Immigration – a group exhibition that also includes the paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures of artists Phung Huynh, Beili Liu, and Tuan Andrew Nguyen.
“Making Home centers the complexities of deeply personal histories of immigrants, as the artists consider topics of intergenerationality, the repercussions of colonial histories, dislocation, memory, otherness, belonging, and resilience.”
Asia Society Texas Center
In preparing to come to Houston for her mural project, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya reflected on the recent murders of Christine Yuna Lee and Michelle Go.
“I will continue fighting and I know we all will, but I just want to wrap our community in light and care right now. I know we can find hope if we just look, in all the allies who stand with us,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I hope to honor the lives of our AAPI sisters and elders by painting this mural at [Asia Society Texas].”
Phingbodhipakkiya is known for her highly visible public art installations, including We Are More, a series of portraits and stories that push back again Asian American stereotypes featured in New York’s Times Square and around Boston; and I Still Believe, a public art campaign in New York City to address the rise in anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her work was also notably featured on the cover of Time Magazine to accompany the March 29 – April 5 2021 issue, We Are Not Silent: Confronting America’s Legacy of Anti-Asian Violence.
Houston Arts Journal 