Artist, Filmmaker, Media Educator, and Activist
Betty Yu is a Chinese-American NYC based interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, media educator and longtime social justice activist. Her documentary “Resilience” about her garment worker mother fighting against sweatshop conditions, screened at national and international film festivals including the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival. Ms. Yu’s interactive multi-media installation, “The Garment Worker” was part of a 5 week art exhibit in Chinatown in 2013, and featured at Tribeca Film Institute’s Interactive 2014. Betty was a 2012 Public Artist-in-Resident with the Laundromat Project and is a 2015 Cultural Agent with the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) a people-powered network. She recently organized “City of Justice: New Year, New Futures” an anti-displacement interactive social justice, arts & activism event that featured 10 art, culture and performance stations at Brooklyn Museum First Saturday. She recently co-created the “Monument to Anti-Displacement Organizing” which is part of the Agitprop! show at the Brooklyn Museum. Betty is the recipient of the 2016 SOAPBOX Award from the Laundromat Project and is a 2016 Blade of Grass fellow. Her current cultural art project with the Chinatown Art Brigade involves telling stories of tenant members of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities who are fighting gentrification and displacement
Ms. Yu is currently on the Board of Directors of Working Films, Deep Dish TV and Third World Newsreel, three progressive media arts centers that distributes and exhibits social issue films. Ms. Yu’s work has been exhibited, screened and featured at the International Center of Photography, The Directors Guild of America, Brooklyn Museum and The Eastman Kodak Museum. In addition, Betty has more than 15 years of community, media justice and labor organizing in NYC’s Chinatown. Ms. Yu’s organizing recognitions include being the recipient of the Union Square Award for grassroots activism and a semi-finalist of the National Brick “Do Something” Award for community leadership in Chinatown.
