‘Migrating Lives: Celebrating Communities Through Participatory Murals’
A yearlong mural project celebrating the beauty of immigration has brought together Penn students, staff, faculty, and alums—along with community members across the Philadelphia area.
2 min. read
Acircle of blank canvases and a colorful pile of paints greet a stream of budding muralists on a cold January morning. Some painters immediately take their places; others await instructions. They’ve all come to the community center for the same reason: To celebrate migration through art, whatever that might look like for them.
The completed canvases were photographed together—by alum Bryan Lathrop—to make one large mural. Lathrop and his wife, Tatiana Olmedo, each painted their own canvases as well.
(Image: Bryan Lathrop)
“Art allows us to connect, it gets at what makes us human,” says Obed Arango, founder and executive director of Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educación (CCATE). Each person should paint a word that reminds them of their culture or identity, he instructs, then lean into their imaginations. “There are many ways to express things. Think of a word, then think of a color that relates to that word, then paint that color.”
For School of Arts & Sciences third-year Selena Yee, that means the Chinese word 傲霜—or ào shuāng—accompanied by carefully painted plum blossoms. “[That word] is often used to describe the plum blossom,” explains Yee, an English and political science major earning a minor in Asian American Studies. “It translates to ‘defying the frost’ or ‘standing proud against the frost,’ representing the ability to thrive in adverse conditions.”
The painting session is one of many sprinkled over the course of the academic year, part of “Migrating Lives: Celebrating Communities Through Participatory Murals.” Sponsored by the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, “Migrating Lives” has taken shape through a collaboration between Penn’s Asian American Studies Program (ASAM) and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLALS) along with community partners the Karen Community Association of Philadelphia and CCATE.
“Migrating Lives” began as the brainchild of ASAM co-director Fariha Khan and CLALS associate director Catherine Bartch. For several years, Khan and Bartch discussed how their programs might collaborate, including the possibility of focusing on a mural effort.
For expert guidance and input, “Migrating Lives” leaned heavily on muralist Shira Walinsky, who has worked with Mural Arts Philadelphia since 2000 and lectures at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design.
“We had a lot of different ideas—celebrating the local communities we work with, and also migration, being together, and Philadelphia broadly,” says Khan. “We liked this idea that we could be spread out geographically and travel to each other’s homes, so to speak.”
When the Schuylkill swallowed the city: Lessons from Hurricane Ida’s historic flood
New Penn research shows that Hurricane Ida wasn’t a once-in-a-century anomaly but a preview of how climate change, urbanization, and aging infrastructure are rewriting flood risk.
The Fed explained: What it does and why it matters
Former Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker and financial historian Peter Conti-Brown, both Wharton professors, unpack the central bank’s origins, its unusual structure, and the quiet ways it shapes the economy
How population changes are impacting primary education worldwide
Research from Penn sociologist Emily Hannum and colleagues reveals regional trends in whether school-age populations are increasing, plateauing, or decreasing—and shows how different countries are responding.
A bioengineered bean gum from the lab of Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell is found to reduce the levels of three microbes associated with head and neck squamous cell cancer to almost zero, without affecting the beneficial bacteria normally found in the mouth.
Fighting oral cancer with bioengineered chewing gum
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell shows that antiviral and antibacterial chewing gums reduce the levels of three microbes linked to worse outcomes in oral cancers, paving the way for more effective and affordable therapies.
