Photography by Melissa Blackall
Lani Asunción (they/ she) uses transmedia storytelling and research in their interdisciplinary multimedia practice to create socially conscious work that encourages contemplation and reflection on counter narratives around collective resistance to settler colonial states everywhere. Drawing from their multiracial Filipinx-American lived experiences to explore the intricacies of identity and belonging, confronting the inner weaving of intergenerational trauma with ritualized happenings, through explorations of performance and public art that serve as acts of reclamation. Asunción works in an array of mediums focusing on print, sculpture, experimental sound, and new media creating immersive digital installation environments. In Asunción’s work, technology becomes a conduit for connection and disruption, breaking down barriers and inviting participation. By challenging established narratives and amplifying marginalized voices, they seek to create spaces where alternative ethics of care, community healing, and social solidarity can thrive.
BIO
Asunción has exhibited performative video and sound work in the group exhibition 2018 Contact Zone: Waikīkī at Honolulu Museum of Art School presented by the Pu'uhonua Society. Asunción has performed at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Now + There Lot Lab, Somerville Museum, Goethe-Institut Boston with Non-Event, Waterworks Museum with Mobius in Evaporate Performance Festival in partnership with Performance Bergen, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, and Aurora Picture Show in Houston, TX. They have attended residencies at the Mass MoCA Studios as a Future Frequencies Fellow, Vermont Studio Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives (BigCi) in NSW, Australia. They have been awarded grants from the Boston Foundation Live Arts Boston Grant, City of Boston's Transformative Public Art, Dame Joan Sutherland Fund from the Australian American Association, and Kala Fellowship Award from Kala Art Institute. Their project Revolutionary AYAT was awarded the 2022 Public Art for Spatial Justice Grant from New England Foundation for the Arts. Asunción is the Pao Arts Center Public Art Manager and Curator of the Un-monument | Re-monument | De-Monument: Transforming Boston 2024 Temporary Public Art Projects & Performances in Chinatown supported by the Mellon Foundation. They are also the Artistic Director and founding member of Digital Soup, a queer multimedia art and performance collective, member of the BCA Studio Residency, and serve on the FPAC Development & Community Engagement Committee (Dev&CE) on the Board of Directors with Fort Point Arts Community. They create from their live/work studio at Midway Artist Studios which resides on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Massachusett people in the Fort Point Arts District in Boston, MA.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Duty-Free Paradise Asunción’s solo exhibition and performance series curated by J.R. Uretsky at the Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts runs from January 20-April 13, 2024, Opening January 26 at 6-9 pm. This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
SONG/ LAND/ SEA | Water Warnings (2024-2025) a commissioned piece by the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy - a project focusing the climate crisis and the devastating results of global warming, sea levels rising and coastal flooding - resulting in environmental racism connected to gentrification and displacement of communities based around the site of the Big Dig (1991-2006). This work implores viewers to confront the realities of climate change and mobilize toward collective resilience and justice. Climate change is not a distant threat but an urgent reality, exacerbating existing inequalities and disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. Along the Greenway this installation resides along Chinatown where the effects of environmental racism are keenly felt, with neighboring Roxbury and Dorchester facing the brunt of urban heat islands.
SONG/ LAND/ SEA | Water Warnings emerges as a public art installation and performance series serving as a warning of environmental change, echoing a dire warning amidst the accelerating climate crisis. As our earth undergoes rapid transformation, this work stands as a stark reminder of the profound shifts reshaping the coastline of the City of Boston.
@ lani.asuncion | @revolutionaryayat | @dfp_dutyfreeparadise | digitalsoup.events | @digital.soup
