From Feb. 10 to March 25, the Pace University Art Gallery is presenting Degentrification Archives by the Chinatown Art Brigade. The art gallery’s degentrification exhibit is a form of education through art that is used to help others learn more about the effects of gentrification on people and the cities they live in. It is filled with paintings, photographs, archives, infographics, maps, and abolition campaigns, all of which are specific to highlighting the unfavorable effects of gentrification.
What is gentrification? Gentrification is the process of renewal in a city, where the cost of living and property prices increase, which leads to an influx of middle-class and upper-class people moving into a neighborhood. It can be seen as a social cleansing that displaces lower-class people from specific communities. One of the first things to consider when discussing gentrification is its impact on lower-class people. Gentrification can lead and has led to the displacement of lower-class people and communities from specific neighborhoods. They must either leave by choice or are evicted by force because of the significant rise in large-scale corporate investment and the rise in rent, which will inevitably destroy small businesses and homes that make up the community.
The art exhibit aims to assess how gentrification has significantly impacted low-income communities. Degentrification Archives examines the areas of Chinatown that need to be de-gentrified for those displaced from their homes and lifestyles. Thankfully, I was able to attend a seminar held by the artists and activists of the gallery. They are part of an intergenerational collective called the Chinatown Art Brigade, comprised of Asian American and Asian diasporic visual artists, media makers, writers, educators, archivists, and organizers. When attending this seminar led by the artists and members of the Chinatown Art Brigade, one of the members stated, “cultural material and aesthetic form of art can create change.” Chinatown is one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York and is still a victim of ultra-gentrification. The exhibit brings attention to the fact that we must protect the civil rights of the people affected, allowing them to create homes, lifestyles, and generational businesses. The artists and activists briefly described the initiation of the idea to depict this message of degentrification in the art gallery, saying, “…it wasn’t until we recognized that some of the graffiti found on the buildings and side walls of Chinatown that it was racism disguised as art. It was a time full of rage and joy for us because we finally brought light to the problems occurring in Chinatown.”
The work done in the gallery is an act of abolition. The exhibition’s goal is to work globally and locally to create a shared community of people who will fight for the cause of gentrification, amplify people’s stories who are on the frontlines of resistance, and, in the long run, help others to imagine a world that fights against state-sanctioned gentrification, incarceration, and structural racism.