As an artist and activist, Betty Yu has spent her career focusing on the community around her: Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she was born and raised. Whether, as a member of the Chinatown Arts Brigade, engaging art galleries on their role in gentrification, or projecting tenants’ life stories on the sides of buildings slated for redevelopment, Yu’s work has stressed the connection between art and social change. But what happens when Covid-19 makes interacting with your neighbors life-threatening? Yu, who first began turning the camera on her parents’ family life in 2019, joins us on the podcast to talk about getting even more personal in the pandemic.
Go beyond the episode
- Betty Yu’s website features a selection of film and videos exploring her family history
- In our Winter 2021 issue, we ran a photograph from (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park, an ongoing multimedia installation about urban gentrification, which includes this short video about Yu’s own story
- Intimate / Distant, an interactive project documenting several generations of Yu’s family
- Videos from Resistance in Progress, a group show that opened during the pandemic
Dad – still, quiet and daydreaming by Betty Yu
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