Joan May T. Cordova and Kathy Shimizu

Joan May and Kathy will create a book and exhibit documenting the annual Mid-Autumn Festival in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. The Festival, the community’s largest traditional cultural event, draws thousands of people through grassroots community organizing efforts. The artists’ project will show how the Festival represents intergenerational families coming together to celebrate, to build community, and to affirm their culture. The festival serves as a resource for sustaining this last remaining community of color in Philadelphia’s center city, and a means for pushing back against predatory development schemes. The project will include the production of original block prints and photographs depicting scenes from the Festival and the development of text from existing Festival documents, interviews, and poetry. Through this work, the artists hope to hone their artistic skills and raise awareness of the significance of the Mid-Autumn Festival, while changing people’s consciousness and understanding of the community in Chinatown.