Programs
5th 店面 Artist-in-Residence: Joy Mao

5th 店面 Artist-in-Residence: Joy Mao

2021-2022

During her artist residency at W.O.W. from February-July 2021, Joy Mao created a special 百家衣 Bai Jia Yi in collaboration with the Chinatown community. She collected fabric remnants from the community’s past and present garment workers,  and assembled them into a special 百家衣 Bai Jia Yi alongside garment industry veterans—May Ying Chen, Alice Ip, and Lorraine Lum.  

From January 2022-July 2022, Joy returned to The W.O.W. Project as Artist-in-Residence for a second year. Her project investigated how clothing-making can be a vessel for community care and culminated in the community co-creation of 八宝粥 Ba Bao Zhou, a capsule collection celebrating the everyday abundance of Chinatown.

‍Joy Mao is a Chinese American fashion designer and artist using clothing as a medium for examining how our clothes shape the way we understand ourselves, our relationships, and the ways we move through our worlds. She was the Artist in Residence at The W.O.W. Project from 2021-2022, and now works as a Teaching Artist on the Creatives Rebuild New York program while creating for her small batch fashion brand, joy mao.

Learn more about Joy's work ↗
Joy works with garment industry veterans May Chen and Alice Ip on the Bai Jia Yi. Joy's Bai Jia Yi centered the lived histories of Chinatown’s garment workers, and the process of listening, learning, and creating alongside one’s community. Fabrics for the garment were donated by May Ying Chen, collected from Chinatown’s past and present garment workers. Beads of Suzhou jade record locations of community members’ experiences in the garment industry: factories where they worked, community gathering spaces, and other places of significance.
The front of the garment references the street map of Manhattan Chinatown—the areas bounded by Grand, Centre, East Broadway, and Allen Streets—where the majority of Chinatown’s garment factories were located during the height of the neighborhood’s garment production in the 1980s. The back of the garment references the streets of the Garment District in midtown Manhattan, where many of Chinatown’s garment workers still work today.
八宝粥 Ba Bao Zhou

For the sixth year of the Artist Residency, Joy piloted a way of designing and constructing clothing that was led by a central question: how can we make clothes in a way which sustains our community? 

Joy worked with industry veteran Lorraine Lum as artistic partners in the development of the Ba Bao Zhou collection, working closely on all stages of the process including research, design, patternmaking, and construction. After grounding her inquiry in Chinatown’s rich history of garment work, Joy initiated a creative process which centered intergenerational collaboration and learning. She developed a series of educational workshops with the Resist Recycle Regenerate (RRR) youth cohort.

Over four months, the cohort cultivated various art-making skills, nurtured intergenerational bonds, and encouraged each other to investigate how creative actions can be guided by historical context, personal experience, introspection, and community engagement. Community elder and former International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) leader, May Ying Chen, spearheaded a discussion about New York's garment-making history and patterns of Asian American immigration. Photographer Mengwen Cao shared about their artistic practice and led the group in activities to practice image-making as a tool for observing Chinatown with respect, love, and care. Informed by these conversations, RRR youth were invited to draw, carve, and print motifs that represented symbols of abundance to them. These became the foundation of a community motif library that Joy and Lorraine incorporated into the collection.

Joy leading the RRR youth cohort in stretching before a workshop session.
RRR participants testing out printing their motif stamps on linen fabric.
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(1) Joy leading the RRR youth cohort in stretching before a workshop session. (2) RRR participants testing out printing their motif stamps on linen fabric. Photographs by Echo Chen & Renee Chang.

After completing production of the garments, W.O.W. conducted a photoshoot that celebrated three groups of women with roots in Chinatown’s history of garment labor. Each subject was photographed in a location significant to their family’s garment history, and styled in customized pieces from the Ba Bao Zhou collection. These intimate portraits allowed the clothes we created to facilitate connection and remembrance.

Joy's work culminated in a showcase at Abrons Art Center, where a gallery exhibition detailing the process of creating the clothes and a public unveiling of the collection was presented with the community. 八宝粥 Ba Bao Zhou, or “Eight Treasures Porridge” is a traditional Chinese sweet stew made from a variety of herbal treasures, such as lotus seeds, mung beans, and red peanuts. It is a beloved symbol of cultural abundance and community nourishment, embodying the spirit of Joy’s collection. 

Garment Production: Joy Mao, Lorraine Lum
Community Collaborators: Resist Recycle Regenerate (Kaitlyn Lee, Christina Duan, Serena Yang, Vivian Yi, Tiffany Huang, Sophia Kschwendt, Bridget Li, Aurora Hom), May Ying Chen, Mengwen Cao, Alice Ip, Mischelle Moy, Jade Li, Wing On Wo Family, Abrons Art Center, Kana Togashi & Saffron BK, Ying Chen, Shaina Yang
Production / Documentation: Denise Zhou, Cocoro Kitagawa, Sueann Leung, June Kim, Renee Chang & Echo Chen, Shirley Chan, Sarula Bao & Endless Editions

Joy and Lorraine presenting Ba Bao Zhou at the Artist Residency showcase in July 2022.
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(1-3) Alice Ip with her ILGWU pins in Columbus Park, the site of the historic 1982 Garment Workers' Strike, when over 20,000 garment workers marched through the streets of Chinatown in protest of low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions. (4-6) Mei Lum, Lorraine Lum, Nancy Seid & Ava June Lloyd in Chinatown and at 26 Mott St, the home of their 5-generation porcelain store. (7-9) Jade Li and her daughter, Mischelle Moy at 1-3 Crosby Street, where their family worked when they first immigrated to New York City in the 1980s to early 1990s. Photographs by June Kim Art direction and styling by Sueann Leung.
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