Third Installation of 2022 Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Series Highlights Stories from Chinatown
Local artists illustrate themes of ‘Love, Struggle, and Resistance’, drawing on real life stories of Chinatown’s youth, elders, tenants, workers, and mothers for new multi-lingual posters.
Chinatown: Love, Struggle, and Resistance. Posters by Kayan Cheung-Miaw and Vida Kuang. A project of the San Francisco Arts Commission's Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Series, funded by the SF Arts Commission and the SF Municipal Transportation Agency.
SAN FRANCISCO – AUGUST 2, 2022: The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) has unveiled Chinatown: Love, Struggle, and Resistance, the third installment of four newly commissioned artwork poster sets for the 2022 Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Series program.
Artist team Kayan Cheung-Miaw and Vida Kuang created six poster designs that presents hand-drawn vignettes highlighting the often-untold stories and struggles of Chinatown’s denizens, showcasing stories of love, struggle, and resistance. Each poster can viewed as a stand-alone comic, or together as a complete story.
“The Chinatown we know may not exist soon. Even before the pandemic, Chinatown had many empty storefronts while hungry developers waited close by.” said artists Kayan Cheung-Miaw and Vida Kuang, in a written project narrative, “Tenants were vulnerable to displacement due to lack of protection and economic instability. The pandemic also escalated the dehumanization of AAPI communities through racist scapegoating.”
The visual narratives foreground themes of love, caring across generations, survival, resistance to displacement and collectively demonstrate how Chinatown residents have contributed to the rich cultural and social legacy of San Francisco.
The artists worked with the Office of Civic Engagement & Immigrant Affairs to translate the text of four of the six posters into each of San Francisco’s threshold languages, including Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino, to help ensure these works would be accessible to a broader audience.
Chinatown: Love, Struggle, and Resistance will be on view from August through October 2022.
The 2022 poster series theme is inspired by and centered around the medium of “comics and sequential arts.” The four participating artists and artist groups for 2022 are: Frederick Noland, Gaia WXYZ, Kayan Cheung-Miaw and Vida Kuang, and A.C. Esguerra.
The first installation of the 2022 poster series, San Francisco Black History, created by artist Frederick Noland, was on view from January to April 2022. Noland’s work highlighted the often-forgotten stories and contributions of San Francisco’s iconic and prominent Black community members.
The second installation of the 2022 poster series, The Tale of Daisy and Gaia, created by artist Gaia WXYZ, was on view from May to July 2022. WXYZ’s illustrates the family history and memoir of local comic artist and UC Berkeley art lecturer, Gaia WXYZ [pronounced guy-ah wize], and their great-Grandmother, Daisy, both of whom moved to San Francisco and the Bay Area nearly a century apart.
The 2023 Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Series theme, “Comics 2.0”, will be a continuation of the 2022 poster series theme. At the June 15, 2022 Visual Arts Committee meeting, six out of 21 finalists were approved to advance to the next stage of the artist selection process, where finalists will develop conceptual proposals for consideration. The six 2023 poster series finalists are: Peter + Maria Hoey, Minnie Phan, Triple Dream Comics, Mari Naomi, Rina Ayuyang, and Breena Nunez. Four artists will be recommended for the project to the Arts Commission and their final poster design will be installed and displayed on Market Street between January and December 2023.
The Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Series program has commissioned new artworks from artists on an annual basis since 1992. Now in its 30th year, the program has partnered with over 120 artists since its inception, commissioning over $1.2 million worth of art, showcasing a wide breadth of artistic styles, themes and topics centered around San Francisco.
Up to four artists annually are commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, in partnership with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and Clear Channel, to create a series of at least six unique works of art that responds to a theme specific to San Francisco. Each poster series is on view for approximately three months at 18 transit kiosks along Market Street between Hyde Street and the Embarcadero.
About The San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment, and shaping innovative cultural policy. Our programs include Civic Art Collection, Civic Design Review, Community Investments, Public Art, SFAC Galleries, and Art Vendor Licensing. To learn more, visit sfartscommission.org.
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