Christine Wong Yap And 11 Senior Citizens Present New Public Art Installation, “How I Keep Looking Up”

Times Square Arts is pleased to present How I Keep Looking Up: Flags of Resilience by the organization's inaugural public artist-in-residence Christine Wong Yap. In collaboration with Encore Community Services, a support program based in Times Square and Hell's Kitchen that provides meals and social services to elderly New Yorkers, the public art project will be ceremonially unfurled on Flag Day, June 14, 2021, in Times Square.

How I Keep Looking Up explores resilience through collaborative art making, resulting in an installation of colorful flags that symbolize individual seniors' stories of perseverance, on view through August 9, 2021.

To develop the installation, Wong Yap has worked side-by-side with eleven Encore seniors through art-making workshops to design flags that represent personal stories about coping through adversities. Seniors reflect on questions like: Where does your resilience come from? How did you learn to cope? What did you learn about the world while facing challenges? In an effort to activate the wider Times Square community, the flag fabrication will also engage local stitchers and costumers in the theater community, another group that has been particularly vulnerable during the pandemic with the closure of Broadway and other performance spaces. The local stitchers include Victor Carvajal, Gabrielle Cryan, Sandra Frye, Sarah Highers, Aislinn Smith, and Tian Thoon.

"Working with the seniors to create this project has been a wonderful experience. Their stories and interests communicate the vibrancy and resilience of Times Square and New York City in general, and I hope that visitors feel this sense of connection to the city, especially after such a difficult year. I'm also grateful to Encore Community Services and Times Square Arts, whose knowledge of the district has been instrumental in bringing this public art project to life," said Christine Wong Yap.

Throughout the development of the project, senior New Yorkers have shared moving stories that celebrate their victories, moments of comfort, and happiness they have found throughout the challenges of the past year. Many seniors' flags commemorate their pets, who have stood by their side during isolation, or recount a difficult time in their life that led them to develop strength and adversity.

Christine Wong Yap is the first artist chosen for the organization's public artist-in-residence program of its kind, an experimental and collaborative model that responds to the uniqueness of Times Square and its public art program by pairing socially engaged artists with Times Square's massive network of businesses, nonprofits, hotels, restaurants, and people.

"Through this work with both seniors and stitchers, Christine is forging new intersections of community here in Times Square and memorializing the vulnerability and celebrating the strength that marks this moment in time for our city and its people. Her collaboration with Encore is modeling the ways in which artists can be powerful navigators of the challenges we are all facing right now, and Times Square as a dynamic space for that work," said Times Square Arts Director Jean Cooney.

To celebrate the opening of How I Keep Looking Up, Times Square Arts, Christine Wong Yap and the seniors will unveil their flags on Flag Day, June 14 at 11AM.