Methods of Cultural Organizing: Building Community Resistance - Fighting Gentrification in NYC’s Chinatown

Betty Yu is an award-winning filmmaker, socially engaged multimedia artist, photographer and activist born and raised in NYC. Yu integrates documentary film, photography, installation, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice. Betty’s films and multimedia work has focused on labor, immigration, gentrification, abolition, racism, militarism, transgender equality among other issues. She is a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-displacement fights. Ms. Yu's documentary "Resilience" about her garment worker mother fighting sweatshop conditions screened at film festivals including the Margaret Mead Film Festival.

Her work has been exhibited and screened at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, NY Historical Society, Museum of the City of NY, Tenement Museum, Artists Space/ISP Whitney Museum, 2019 BRIC Biennial, Apexart, Pace University Art Gallery, Transmitter Gallery, 601 Artspace, Five Myles, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, Bullet Space, Carriage Trade, Old Stone House and MAXXI in Rome. "The Garment Worker'', an interactive installation, was featured at Tribeca Film Institute's Interactive Showcase. Her multimedia installation, "Resistance in Progress”, highlighting housing activism in Flushing was featured at the Queens Museum. Betty had her first solo exhibition, "(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park" at Open Source Gallery. Ms. Yu won the Aronson Social Justice Award for her film "Three Tours" about U.S. veterans returning home from war in Iraq, and their journey to overcome PTSD.

She holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College/CUNY, and a New Media Narratives certificate from the International Center of Photography. For nearly a decade she has been teaching video, film, new media, social practice, art and activism at universities such as Hunter College. Pratt Institute, John Jay College and The New School. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Production at Marymount Manhattan College. Her forthcoming photography and art college book, Family Amnesia: Chinese American Resilience will be released in late Spring 2025.

This event is part of the 2025 Social Justice Academy. For more information about this event series, click here.

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