Resist Recycle Regenerate 2019-2020

RRR 2019-2020 Fellows

‍Sophia Chok is a first generation American Malaysian high school senior. She speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, English and loves learning new languages and cultures. She hopes to learn more and explore her own identity, while contributing to the Chinatown community through art activism as an RRR fellow. Her interests range from wrestling on a team to studying Native American history to coding a website.

Amanda Cui is a first generation Chinese American who is currently a junior at Hunter College High School. She has been involved with Asian American activism for almost 3 years now and enjoys learning more about her identity. Joining RRR will allow her to approach her Asian American roots in an artistic way and let her see activism in a different lense.

Jessica Giang is a high school junior who has a passion for the maths and sciences; her interests range from playing Jazz and making bracelets to watching Crash Course and listening to science podcasts. She joined RRR with the hope of gaining experience in collaborative projects through helping the community in nuanced ways. By learning and utilizing new and unique skills with RRR, her goal is to become more involved and feel closer to her culture.

Wenyin Jiang is a junior at Hunter College High School interested in environmental science. She is excited to be a RRR fellow and explore various aspects of the Asian American creative culture.

Cynthia Qian is currently a junior at Hunter College High School. She is excited to familiarize herself with her Asian roots and learn to be a proud Chinese American. Something that has always helped tie her back to her culture is playing the Chinese harp. Cynthia really loves music in general and she hopes that she can further connect to her heritage through art in the RRR program.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Tiffany Zhao was brought up as a Chinese American female. She is currently enrolled as a freshman at the College of Staten Island. Tiffany is fully committed to her school work, family, peers, and learning about her heritage. While she was raised in an American way, she hopes that by joining RRR she can learn more about her culture. Her interests include graphic design, volunteering, badminton, music, and knitting.

RRR 2019-2020 Leadership

Program Coordinators

Born and raised in Bangkok, Ja Bulsombut was a fellow in RRR’s first year, returned as a co-leader for the program’s second-year cohort, and is now a coordinator for the upcoming year. Ja thinks of W.O.W. as her home away from home and is excited to see RRR grow further as an intergenerational and women-centric space and community for young Asian/American women. In particular, she looks forward to deepening RRR’s engagement with community activism via its art-making practices and the incorporation of paper sculpture into the curriculum.

Kristin Chang was born and raised in California. She was a fellow in the program’s first year, a co-leader for the program’s second-year cohort, and a co-coordinator for the upcoming third year, where she will help guide the new leaders and help shape the curriculum. She is excited to continue fostering a community and building an enduring lineage of young woman artists, leaders, activists, and storytellers. She is especially looking forward to incorporating activism into RRR’s art projects and exploring sculptural/3D paper arts.

Program Leaders

Angela Chan joined RRR as a second year fellow and is currently a co-leader of the program. She is fluent in Cantonese and English and loves learning new languages during her free time. Angela is excited to continued promoting the project’s mission through paper making and 3D art, and being able to explore her identity as an Asian American. She hopes to transfer the skills and knowledge she gained during her time as an RRR fellow to community activism efforts outside of Chinatown and foster a safe space for the new cohort of fellows to grow personally through act and activism.

Bonnie Chen is a past fellow of the RRR program and is currently a co-leader in the program’s third year. Bonnie is excited to lead the next cohort of young women in discovering personal heritages and deepening their cultural understanding of the larger Asian American community. In this next year, Bonnie aims to use her newfound skills in advocating and organizing to foster meaningful connections within the Chinatown community and their residents. Bonnie hopes that through her role as a co-leader, she can inspire others to fall in love with the intersection of art and activism to promote further lasting legacies within Chinatown and resist gentrification.

Teaching Artist

Emily Chow Bluck is an artist, educator, and organizer based in New York City. These three identities coalesce to shape her evolving art praxis rooted in performance, collaboration, dialogue, and community building. As an eternal foodie, much of her work has manifested as performative installations centering food as a vehicle to unpack the politics around incarceration / self-determination, value / consumption, and invasion / migration. She’s joined RRR as the 2019-2020 teaching artist out of her love for working with young people, Chinatown, and traditional paper and sculptural crafts. To see Emily’s work, visit emilychowbluck.com or catch one of her pieces at Gracie Mansion Conservancy, on display through the end of December 2019.  

We Create Our Own Light Writing Workshop

In April and May of 2020 the RRR leaders, coordinators, and W.O.W. interns participated in a month-long series of writing workshops taught by Dandelion. Throughout the five sessions, we explored the themes of UNEARTHING, POWER WITHIN, CREATE LIGHT, ANCESTORS, LIBERATED FUTURES, reading and writing together to reimagine the world and ourselves outside of oppressive structures. We developed community-centered writing practices and wrote for ourselves, culminating in an intimate Zoom reading.