"Degentrifying My Parents' Block"
This photo is from a mixed media work in progress that uses 360° video, augmented reality, and photography to re-imagine a new society where housing is free for all and real estate profiteers are outlawed. It incorporates the voices of my parents, neighbors, and other Latinx and Chinese residents of Brooklyn’s hyper-gentrifying neighborhood of Sunset Park, where I grew up.
Betty Yu is a multimedia artist, photographer, filmmaker, and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. Ms. Yu integrates documentary film, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice, and she is a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing. Ms. Yu has been awarded artist residencies and fellowships with the Laundromat Project, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Intercultural Leadership Institute, and Santa Fe Art Institute.
Her work has been presented at the Directors Guild of America, Brooklyn Museum, Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, Tribeca Film Festival’s Interactive Showcase, Queens Museum, the 2019 BRIC Biennial; and in 2018 she had a solo exhibition at Open Source Gallery in New York. In 2017 Ms. Yu won the Aronson Journalism for 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 from Hunter College and an International Center Photography New Media Narratives One Year Certificate. Ms. Yu teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, John Jay College, and The New Schoo. In addition, she has over 20 years of community, media justice, and labor organizing work. Betty will have her curatorial debut this Fall as she presents Imagining De-Gentrified Futures, an exhibition that will feature artists of color, activists and others along with her own work at Apex Art in Tribeca, NYC. Betty sits on the boards of Third World Newsreel and Working Films.