Photo courtesy of Nohemi Rodriguez

The multimedia art project “Washing” culminated in a final showcase on May 29 and 30 at Parcel R1, or Tufts Parking Lot. The installation, which incorporated large-scale video projections and audio clips from interviews with Chinatown community members, reflected on the detrimental effects of the hideous I-93 and I-90 highways. The piece was created by Lily Xie, Dianyvet Serrano, Chu Huang, Charlene Huang, and Maggie Chen in collaboration with the Asian Community Development Corporation.

“There has been work regarding not just air quality or the environment but just the highways more broadly, for decades, in Chinatown,” said Xie. “…I guess I’ll start with the name, ‘Washing.’ It came from a conversation I was having with a friend, a resident, and I was asking him about his experience living near the highways, in an apartment building right next to I-93. He said, ‘People do research, and they do studies on the harmful impacts of the highway, but I really don’t need the scientists to tell me that because I can just look outside and see that my windows are dirty.’ As an artist, it got me thinking about what it means to have this dirt on your windows that you wash away, that always comes back because the highways are always there. The metaphor of ‘washing’ was really useful for me to think about repair and maintenance.” 

To Xie, the concept of “washing” is connected to the idea of “cleaning the harm of the past.”

The event began with a panel discussion led by project coordinator and research assistant Sung-Min Kim. During the conversation, artists Chen, Huang, and Xie spoke about their creative processes, inspirations, and what they hope an audience will take away from the show. 

According to Xie, the I-93 was a project that came out of the 1950’s and was part of a national push for highways to be constructed throughout the United States. It was initially planned to go through a large portion of Chinatown’s business district, as well as the garment and leather districts. Merchant leaders mobilized to push back against the plans, and the route was eventually moved, saving the commercial district and families from being displaced. The I-90 extension, which was built several years later, created a “very traumatic experience,” according to Xie, destroying a lot of the residential neighborhood, as not as many people took action.

During the panel, the speakers addressed what stood out to them when they were gathering resident interviews. Huang said that it was meaningful to meet with individuals and “put a face on the scars” that the highways have brought to the neighborhood.

“For me, the more interviews that I heard from, it turned something that was very invisible and abstract to [something] more concrete, [showing how] it impacts a person’s everyday life,” said Huang.

The process to create “Washing” was multifaceted. The team held interviews with friends, families, residents, and people doing air pollution research and gathered about seven total hours of edited-down audio. They created their videos using iPhones and invited a visiting artist, Daphne Xu, a filmmaker who works at the Chinatown Land Trust. In the beginning, said Xie, the artists were interested in taking videos of the highways, cars, and sidewalks, but as time progressed, people were “stepping into their own creative vision.” They would take more personal videos that addressed themes such as “what feels like home.”

After the talk, videos were screened on the back of a building overlooking the parking lot, representing scenes from life in Chinatown. They captured the highways and featured clips of food being prepared on a stove, a child playing with colorful toy cars, and a rag being dipped into a bucket of water. Set against these images were audio clips from interviews with community members, where speakers talked about not wanting to open their windows when there is heavy traffic outside or playing in the rubble of the buildings while highways were being built. The installation was meant to honor Chinatown residents’ voices while drawing personal connections that illustrate the impact of the construction and pollution on peoples’ lives.

“What really moves me is when people see themselves in the work and feel recognized,” said Xie. “I feel like we saw a little bit of that when we had our pre-screening session a couple of weeks ago. I had some folks tell me that they felt really empowered to hear their voices included. And I hope that the audience members too – those who are residents or even those who live in other neighborhoods that are impacted by highways – can maybe see some of their experiences and feel seen.”