psba

Arts at Rondo: Rondo Library Public Art Project LOVE, LIGHT and PEACE (public art project with Rondo Community members and ongoing project with the library).

More than twenty community art engagement workshops and events, and more than 2000 people were involved in making public art for the library. The work was a collaboration with peace activist Melvin Giles and metal artist Gita Ghei. The first phase of the facade project is complete, and Melvin, Gita and I are working on the Rondo photo project for the inside of the library.

Collaboration with artist Carrie Thompson @ Minnesota Museum of American Arts . Ritual of making the wish for the new years. People gather to create their own wish and painted on the figures. Instead of people taking their art homes, we asked people to have a collaborative exhibition for two months. After the two months we had a closing gathering for strangers to celebrate their start of the year and share moments together.

Marcus Young, Aki Shibata, Ricardo Beaird, eric avery, Olga Nichols lived in the Weisman for 48 hours using their adjusted life routines to transform the museum into a place of behavioral and social experimentation. Together, we explore a way of being that is rare, a strange relationship to art that opens new tones of healing, creativity, and remembering what is human.

The work asks the simple question: what is home to you? Whether near or far, exploring these feelings about a home can be a powerful experience capable of healing and connection within yourself and with others.

CarryOn Homes with Mobile Mia invites participants to write down their stories of home on a sheet of origami paper that can be folded to form a house that holds the memories, sensations and emotions that may no longer be at arm’s reach. This seemingly insignificant action represents the massively complicated journey that immigrants, migrants and refugees undertake every day.

Don’t You Feel It Too? is the simple and beautiful act of dancing your inner life in public. Aki Shibata is founding member alongside Marcus Young. Marcus and Aki has been practicing this format of public art for over 10 years. It is a form of movement meditation that transforms the self while taking action in the world. Participants feel stress relief, resilience, compassion, connection, and belonging. Developed since 2008, the practice is healing, art, and activism together.

Dear Earth is a love letter writing, reading, and listening project. Participants were invited to get in touch with their love of the natural world and write a love letter to Earth. After the writing, they read the love letter out loud and record it; the recording became a part of an all-night love letter to Earth radio show produced in collaboration with Frogtown Radio.

WFNU 94.1 Frogtown Radio broadcasted the recordings for the duration of the Northern Spark festival. ​The project encourages a personal connection with earth and promotes a different perspective toward climate change: What if we all treated earth like it was our loved one? Would we change our behavior?

Letters to Home was an imagination practice for participants to write a letter to home, whatever “home” means to them. Over 2 days there were more than 100 letters were written to their home and participants had a conversation about their home around the table.

Dear One was a public love letter writing practice between Aki Shibata and John Colburn. Two artists wrote love letters for 3 hours between two galleries and asked gallery visitors to deliver the letter to the other gallery. Once the gallery visitor delivered the letter, they were asked to read the letter aloud. The question around what is the public display of intimacy as well as what it means to be a messenger and be the voice of love.

The project is centered around interviewing 18 strangers who are connected to each other in that they are immigrants to the Twin Cities. In the interview, each individual was asked to share one letter that meant a lot to them. Quotes from the letters and stories shared in the interviews make up the text of this collection of prints. I created the prints to inspire myself and others to write letters and be interested in other stories. This artist book was exhibited at the MCBA.

On June 5th 2016, held a papermaking workshop with the individuals who shared their letters and stories with me. The paper we made is the paper participants at the gallery can write a letter to their loved one. The handmade paper was placed at the gallery to encourage letter writing.

Many thanks to the individuals who agreed to participate in this project by sharing their letters and stories. Zane Vilnite, Stefan Balaz, Amin.M.Mohamed, Tinh Le, Asha Elgonda, Hlee Lee, Pa Na Lor, Rose Chu, Eva Nsereko, Anabel DeJuan Gomez, Thai Chang, Joo Hee Pomplun, Lina Jamoul, Laichee Yang, Bao Marley, Mary Anne Quiroz, Marlina Gonzalez, and Vong Lee

The project was made possible by MCBA Jerome Book Arts Fellowship.

Dear Stranger is letter writing and reading practice. Participants wrote a letter to a stranger reviling their secrets. Also, participants receive a letter from a stranger and read the stranger’s secrets.

stranger+kitchen is a private / semi-public culinary art performance presented with the artist, a selected random stranger(s), and the curator/host within the TuckUnder Projects kitchen and dining areas that questions human interaction and social behavior.

@ the Rochester Art Center 3rd floor emerging artist series. Setting up a 6 weeks challenge for myself and broadening my creative practice. I am asking questions about our behavior in a formal gallery space. This work is more focused on a single person that I am having a meal with and being on a date, and the interesting relationship I am going to have for that moment, which has to be a relationship grounded in the present.

MPR Nikki Tundel’s story on the show can find here:

River Watching is a practice for us to sit and watch a river to reflect on our life journey. It was one going project for 3 years for 6 consecutive Sunday between May and June. People can join how long ever they wanted to sit with the artist.

CarryOn Homes at The Commons was created with a team of 5 artists, Aki Shibata, Peng Wu, Zoe Cinel, Shun Jie Yung, and Preston Drum. It is a multi-functional pavilion hosting the stories of immigrants in Minnesota, where individuals came together to explore the concept of home through community gatherings, workshops, live performances and personal reflection. Home is a universal idea that transcends divisions by race, religion, gender identity, and class. At home, we belong, we feel safe and we are loved.

This interactive sculptural installation reimagined the home as an open structure. Walls disappear, while invitations to engage appear in the multiple forms of a stage, a colorful mural, a reflecting garden, a photo gallery and a sculpture built from repurposed suitcases.

CarryOn Homes at the Commons was awarded The Creative City Challenge 2018, a temporary public art commission program conceived as a showcase for local creative talent, Minneapolis community identities and a tangible symbol of the complex stories that make up the many narratives within our urban landscape. Each year the winning work is showcased at the Northern Spark festival.

After the Creative City Challenge the CarryOn Homes got a call from the Eastside St. Paul to install the temporary multi-faceted public art. Held Eastside Autumn Art Celebration with 3 Eastside arts organizations to further tell the hidden narrative and celebrate the power of art and community gathering.

After the installation at the Hamm Park, CarryOn Homes @ The Saint Paul City Hall was made possible by a partnership between the artist group CarryOn Homes and the Larry Cohen Recognition Project. To honor Judge Larry Cohen’s life worth work with immigrants and indigenous people in MN. The structure added new graffiti to welcome participation.

As part of Mn Artists Presents: CarryOn Homes, a multidisciplinary program reimagining the museum as experimental classroom. Ask how and why do we learn the way we do? We invited Minnesota-based creatives who have experienced immigration or emigration to re-envision the museum as an experimental classroom. Through installations, performances, workshops, and more, participants can share resources and discover new paths for education.

Writer and scholar Christina Schmid wrote an article to unpacks the deep structures that give rise to how knowing, learning, and teaching unfold in various cultural contexts of An Un/Education.

Food is one of the best art forms to bring people together.

psba works with many different locations, communities, and chefs to bring the food to bring peace and connection together. This gathering can lead to community circles of conversation to meditational silent eating to organization retreat. Having the food as a center and starter of collaboration and deepening connection to each other is one of behavioral art practices we can all promote.

1 year-long photographic self documentary. The documentary acted as self-discovery of identity intersection of being Japanese and living in the USA as an immigrant. The exhibition included book art, photo installation, and sound installation of the story being read in Japanese and English. The audience came into the installation space to embrace and experience themselves in thinking and looking into the worlds with a bi-cultural and bilingual way of immigrant life.

photo projects seeking what is happening around us that is causing negative effects, however sometimes the negative causes can create an unexpected positive cause. The project is to find where is two causes intersection and what is the outcomes from them.