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​​WEN-TI TSEN was born in Shanghai, China in 1936. Both of his parents went to France when they were teenagers, with their older, revolutionary siblings after they succeeded in overturning the imperial Qing government, and the Republic was formed, in 1911. The parents stayed in France until 1925, and went to schools there: the mother, Fan Tchunpi (Fang Junbi – https://www.fantchunpi-fangjunbi.com) was the first Chinese woman to graduate from the Beaux Arts Academy; and the father, Tsen Tson-ming (Zeng Zhongming) received a degree in literature from the Lyon University. They returned to China, and found their spots in the arts and politics of the flourishing 1930s Shanghai. One year after the birth of their youngest son, Wen-ti, though, Japan invaded China and life changed. The father was killed. War and revolution continued. In 1949, with the country in uncertain straits, the mother took herself and her 3 sons to France.

 

Wen-ti went to school in Paris and London. He was not a good student. In 1955, he started in architecture studies, but soon shifted to painting. For most of next 2 years, though, instead of classes, he would travel, and hitchhiked in France, Italy, Spain and Greece, and worked at odd jobs.  The family, since moved to the US, decided to stop the funding and had him registered at the Boston Museum School. Settling down, he graduated and received a traveling scholarship to go abroad. This was applied for a 2 years' travel: a journey by car from Paris to Karachi, a stay Pakistan, in Sri Lanka in Egypt, and a further stay in France.

 

Returning to the US in 1963, he started teaching at the Boston Museum School, played with forms and styles in art, but found a prescribed career for an artist with galleries and collectors contrary and forbidding. In 1964, the onset of the Vietnam War aroused a strong passion in him.  He delved deeply into the imperialist roots of colonialism and racism. For two years . he stopped working, obsessed with news and marched in protests. Coming out of it, he looked for ways to incorporate the strong emotions of anti-war, racial injustice and wealth inequality into forms of art: paintings, installations, 8mm movies, posters and pamphlets. Scrutinized by the FBI, his teaching job got cancelled. Instead, serendipitously, he found a 3-year job as an art teacher in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1969, Beirut was a very cosmopolitan and open society: rife with political ideas and multi-lingual debates. His art thrived, and was well supported by the public. But, after awhile, life as an outsider could not last, and activism had to be back in the US.

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On return to the US in 1972, the antiwar and civil rights movements have changed. The women’s movement had come to the fore. Wen-ti found new groups and learned new political understandings. There was no teaching job to be had.  With a family coming, he decided to find work as a billboard painter. He got hired as a “helper”, teamed with lifelong veterans, lugging riggings, stages, and paint. It was a hard 8-to-4 job. Crewing with fellow workers on jobs taught him a new mode of life. After one year, at a slowdown, there were layoffs. The company wanted to reserve him as a “picture-man”, conflicting with some union seniority rules. He opted to go on unemployment, and to find some easier work that can earn a living and still make art. The solution was found in being trained as a union movie projectionist The job had decent wage-rates, limited manager’s access to the booth and 20-minutes between reels. For the next 30-some years, worked in a variety of theaters all over the Boston area. But, also, he was able to do much of the political art at work. The job, with its dependency on fluctuating management needs got him to be aligned very solidly with the laboring economy. Away from work, he continued to make paintings and installations that analyzed and critiqued the social ills of corporate dominance.

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By the '80s, the progressive movement started to splinter, different groups moved  in search of their own intersectional issues, Wen-ti started to drift more towards the Asian American movements, and became more involved with Boston Chinatown’s existential concerns. He found common ground with many of the new, younger Asian American activists,  and became active in several organizations: Asian Anerican Resource Workshop, that instigated Asian American activism in the area; and, Chinese Progressive Association, that works and fights for Chinese immigrants and workers' rights. Together, they formed art groups, to put together art happenings and events in different forms. Sometimes, these involved getting established artists to create exhibits that demonstrated the distinctive Asian American experiences and identities; sometimes, organizing community people to do large art pieces for demonstrations on issues such as “Against-Gentrification”, or, “Flagging Chinatown”, that was to affirm the community’s right of place; or, a 30-foot oral-history photo-mural that told the life-story of an undocumented worker. For, about 25 years, he worked on projects with the community: to understand, to explain, and to promote its needs.

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At home, in the studio, he continued to make art to explore social issues from a deeply felt, personal points of view, as paintings or installations,.

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The culmination of the two paths maybe the latest "Chinatown Worker Statues" project. It is to be a set of 4 bronze statues set in prominent public places in Boston's Chinatown. It is something that he has been thinking for many years: not long after he arrived in Boston in the late-1950s, he first encountered the Chinese laundry, four steps down at the corner of the street where he lived. He saw the man working at the small basement shop as he went off to school, and then he was still at work at 10 or 11, when he came home. At that time, there were still many Chinese laundries, at almost every street corner, and that was their lot: it was washing cloths or wait on tables at a restaurant. These images, and the discriminating racial limitations had kept recurring in his head for years. The "Worker Statues" as a project became crystalized in the last 20-or-so years: making a definitive tribute to the Chinese workers' lives, and at the same time project onto others. The tribute is to be made: in bronze, the most enduring and heroic of the art materials, made in the best of sculptural forms, to celebrate, for once, not a soldier, an athlete or a politician, but the ordinary, quotidian working person who gives all for our social world. A proposal was made – grand beyond much hope. Astonishingly, it was picked up by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) . With the City's strong support, it is to be realized.

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They say, "Art" is from the Latin root, ar, which is: "To make a link." One could say, then: "Art is a work of skill that makes links." And, that, is what it is.

 

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