Lily Yeh

Lily Yeh, photographed by her son

Lily Yeh (* 1941 in Guizhou , Republic of China ) is a Taiwanese-American artist and professor of painting and art history with Chinese roots. She became known primarily through joint projects with artists and residents in socially disadvantaged areas in many countries. She has received many awards.

First years

Lily Yeh grew up in Taiwan and initially studied traditional Chinese painting at the National University of Taiwan . In 1963 she went to the USA to study at the prestigious School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania . From 1968 to 1998 she taught painting and art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia ( University of the Arts (Philadelphia) ). She married the American architect David S. Traub. She worked on individual projects with her son Daniel , a photographer and cameraman.

The Village of Arts and Humanities

In 1989, Lily Yeh was one of the founders of The Village of Arts and Humanities project in North Philadelphia and became director. The main aim of the project is to improve the situation of people in socially disadvantaged areas. This includes the artistic design of the environment, the preservation of local art and culture and practical development aid. The redesign of a previously desolate park area began together with the neighboring children. By 2004 the single project had become a professional organization with an annual budget of 1.3 million US dollars. 26 employees, many of them artists, worked to make entire neighborhoods in Philadelphia-North more human. They looked after thousands of low-income, mostly African-American , youth and their families. They created gardens from wasteland, held art and education courses and founded a youth theater. In 1993 Lily Yeh began to implement extensive international projects. A small selection:

Kenya project in Korogocho, Nairobi

At the invitation of a local art center and the Catholic Church of St. John, Yeh mainly worked in Korogocho , one of the most desolate slums in Nairobi , in 1993/94 . Together with children and adults from the community, she first designed a shabby cemetery on the edge of a garbage dump to create a brightly painted garden. At the end of the 1990s, The Village of Arts and Humanities collaborated with some artists from Korogocho and Nairobi. A two-year art program was created for around 200 street children in Korogocho. In 2004, Yeh participated in an HIV / AIDS prevention program in Korogochu and five neighboring communities with workshops for hundreds of young people . In 2007 the work continued with social workers from St. John's Congregation.

The Barefoot Artist

Lily Yeh at Barefoot Artist

In 2003 Lily Yeh founded the non-profit organization Barefoot Artist Inc. (barefoot artist), left The Village of Arts and Humanities in 2004 to continue to implement the same concept internationally. Projects have emerged in ten countries, including China and Taiwan. Some examples of her socio-political-artistic works are given below:

A bridge over barriers Salt Lake City, Utah

At the invitation of a neighborhood initiative from Salt Lake City , Yeh led the largest public community art project in the US state of Utah from 2005 to 2009 . According to their suggestions, 25 local artists and around 1500 adults and children in the area transformed a huge viaduct over a motorway with ten lanes into a cheerful, colorful building.

Rwanda - The Rugerero Genocide Memorial

As part of the Barefoot Artists Inc. Lily Yeh worked in Rwanda , one of the poorest countries in Africa, with and for survivors of war (1990) and genocide (1994). In 2004 she designed a Rugerero Genocide Memorial Monument Park - a park in Rugerero with a memorial to commemorate the genocide. In 2005 the park was built with the active support of several hundred villagers. With the support of friendly organizers, Yeh started several programs under the motto: Reconciliation, Education and Employment . The aim was to provide survivors of the war with financial means, tools and instruction in modern techniques in order to enable them to provide better care for themselves and their families in the future.

West Bank, refugee camps

Balata

An art project took Lily Yeh to the largest refugee camp in the West Bank , Balata . There, bordering Nablus , over 100,000 people live under difficult circumstances. Together with the Balata Women Center , students from the Balata Girls School and other young people, Yeh created a Palestinian Tree of Peace . In 2012 and 2013, Yeh returned with an international team of five to create murals in Balata, Nablus and another extensive refugee camp in the West Bank, Al Aquaba .

Damascus, children's art project

During a visit to Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria , Lily Yeh initiated a workshop in Al Tiijari Park in Damascus together with Noor Sheik and members of the Red Crescent . The group invited around twenty children and some of their parents to encourage them to take photos, draw, paint, and tell stories. After the drawings, the children created a large, colorful painting. Yeh made a colorful book from portrait photos of the children, their stories and small works of art. It was exhibited in Beijing in 2008 and finally given to the Village of Arts and Humanity in Philadelphia as illustrative material.

Haiti, the tree of life project Cité Soleil

Barracks in Cité Soleil

In 2010 Lily Ye organized artistic projects in a refugee camp in the Cité Soleil - the largest slum on the outskirts of Port au Prince . Children and disabled adults drew self-portraits and painted sticks with colorful memories. Together, Yeh and the residents transformed a destroyed wall into a naive work of art adorned with the Haitian tree of life.

Görlitz - summer camp

At the invitation of the Görlitz artist group Bohemian Crossings , artists from Barefoot Inc. and Lily Yeh took part in a summer camp in the former GDR in Görlitz on the border with Poland in 2016 . In addition to meetings of artists from different countries, the aim was to upgrade the unsightly slaughterhouse area through artistic design. Local residents helped create a garden with colorful sculptures and canvases, adorned with pictures that had been created during Yeh's work in Taiwan with primary school students there.

Publications

• Barefoot Artists: Healing the World, One Artist at a Time , Designer / builder, A Journal of the Human Environment, Nov./Dec. 2006.
• Awakening Creativity , Dandelion School Blossoms, New Village Press, 2011.

Movie

• The Barefoot Artist. A full-length documentary about Lily Yeh by Glenn Holsten and Daniel Traub , premiered in 2013.
• The Legend of Lily Yeh

Web links

Commons : Lily Yeh  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The Village of Arts and Humanities
• The Barefoot Artist Movie
• The Rwanda Healing Project , Lily Yeh at Bioneers Conference
• From a lecture by Lily Yeh

Individual evidence

1. ^ About Us - The Village of Arts and Humanities . Retrieved January 23, 2017.
2. ^ An Kang, Taipei, Taiwan (2013) . Barefoot Artists. June 20, 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
3. ↑ Lily Yeh in Görlitz. In: Görlitzer Anzeiger from October 17, 2015.
4. ↑ Summer camp with Lily Yeh
5. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ^ The Barefoot Artist . Retrieved January 23, 2017.
7. ↑ In 'Barefoot Artist,' Lily Yeh confronts painful past in her journey to heal communities through art | PBS NewsHour . March 11, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2017.