Tomie Arai

[1] Her works consist of temporary and permanent multimedia site-specific art pieces that deal with topics of gender, community, and racial identity,[2] and are influenced by her Japanese heritage and the urban experience of living in New York.

At the time, Arai created posters, brochures and promotional materials for community groups as part of Citibank’s Graphic Support program.

Arai was also a co-founding member of the Asian American arts collective Godzilla, active in New York City during the 1990s.

She sat on the Boards of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, where she served as its first artist-in-residence, the Lower East Side Printshop, Printed Matter, the Women’s Studio Workshop and the Bread and Roses Cultural Project of the 1199 Health and Hospitals Workers Union.

[13] Her work demonstrates her persistent commitment to documenting and reclaiming a variety of peoples’ untold histories while it simultaneously also engages viewers in dialogue with contemporary social struggles.

[14] Later, in 2006, Arai constructed the site-specific work Swirl out of wood, steel, and silk screened photographs of local members of the community.

[15][17] The artwork itself is a large display of family photographs, shaped like the Chinese jade bi, situated in the Vine Street Expressway.

[33] Chinatown Art Brigade was co-founded by Arai, ManSee Kong, and Betty Yu in New York City in December 2015.