Lena Chen
@lenachen
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Feminist Artist 👠 UC Berkeley PhD candidate studying sex work, performance art, & Asian womanhood 🥡 Director, The Last Mayor of Chinatown 🐯 Tiger MILF
Berkeley, CA
Joined October 2007
Proud to make the cover of @PGHCityPaper and to be part of the beautiful legacy of sex worker organizing in Pittsburgh ❤️ Thank you to @PghSWOP @sapiotextual @adrierising @pjrey and all those who’ve been doing the work long before me!
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Presented on Asian American BDSM and artist archives for the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Boston!
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Psyched to virtually present my documentary “The Last Mayor of Chinatown” today at my alma mater for @English_CMU Bridges & Borders conference on the theme of the archive. My subject Shirley Yee is retiring from CMU this year so it feels very full circle!
eventbrite.com
Come join us at Bridges and Borders 2025: The Archive, where we'll explore connections and barriers through history and culture!
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Speaking on this roundtable at @AmerStudiesAssn #ASA2024 on artistic programming in the academy aka how to support artists I love with institutional funds while avoiding tokenization (and often failing)
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Outfit check from day 2 of @AmerStudiesAssn in Baltimore. My Lyft driver gave me recs for crab cakes and strip clubs 🦀
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I have a co-authored chapter with @kass_sparks_on sex worker gift economies and mutual aid in this edited volume on sex work ✨ Get a free copy when it comes out next month with NYU Press. Edited by @barbbrents Bernadette Barton & @drjonessoc.
Exploring Modern Sex Work: NYU’s New Book "Sex Work Today" + 5 Free Book Copies for our Slixa Girls:
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Presenting in-progress research next week for this virtual series at University of Toronto! I’ll discuss representations of Asian sex workers, the artistic activism of @RedCanarySong, and the founding of JADED Pittsburgh after the 2021 Atlanta shootings https://t.co/8DTOqCPWQm
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Lena Chen, AARC graduate student affiliate, has won three awards for her film, "The Last Mayor of Chinatown," which tells the story of the rise, decline, & rediscovery of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown. @lenachen
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My documentary on Yuen Yee, the last honorary mayor of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown, is screening across the Midwest this fall ❤️ Catch the film in-person in Ohio and Minneapolis or online during @VAFFvancouver 🎥 We hope to complete a Chinese translation by the end of the year!
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The Singaporean performance artist and @BerkeleyTDPS PhD student Zihan Loo will be sharing thoughts on Ye’s work.
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Kim Ye will be sharing an exclusive look at her latest video work “Mother Fucker,” created as part of her @stanfordccsre Mellon Arts Fellowship!
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A huge thanks to @15FilmFest for the recognition and offering a platform to the story of the Yee family and Pittsburgh’s Chinatown!
Congratulations to "The Last Mayor of Chinatown" for earning the First Place award in this year's Fifteen Minute Film Festival! Directed by Lena Chen, the film tells the story of the rise, decline, and rediscovery of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown.
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[insert lit review]
When you draft a paper, does it look like a Mad Libs no one wants to do? A bunch of [X], [another word for cultivate], [example], [citation here], [transition].
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Filmed on a day when the museum was closed to the public, the project was originally commissioned by We Have Always Been Here, an exhibition at the Schwules Museum. We’ll be showing at 9am on Saturday June 29 in the Weird Sexy Shorts block of Feminist Border Arts Film Festival.
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as a powerful feminine figure and the marginalization of her queer and sex worker consorts. The ritual features a procession through the museum halls, offerings of music and dance to the goddess, and the planting of a succulent known as the “Mother of Thousands.”
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Despite the gate itself not being physically returned to its home in Iraq, our intention was to return Ishtar to the gate symbolically. Inspired by harvest festivals held during the equinox in ancient Babylon, the performance delves into the historical repression of Ishtar …
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MOTHER OF WHORES Lena Chen & Juliana Fadil-Luchkiw USA/Germany (10:09) This 3-channel video documents a performance at the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum which engages with the ongoing movement to rematriate stolen cultural objects held in Western museums.
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Thrilled to announce that Mother of Whores - a video performance at the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum - is debuting at the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival this Saturday, June 29th at New Mexico State University! https://t.co/mVDuiGpEls See thread for details:
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Excited to share our CFP for a new special section of @catalyst_sts, “Racial Matters of Asian/America” co-edited with Natalia Duong ✨. Please share widely and consider submitting, esp those w/ new work at intersections of AsAm studies and Feminist STS! https://t.co/de0saAj0kZ
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Lena Chen’s essay won the Ray Sprigle Memorial Award as the best entry in the Division 2 outlet category and the excellence award for writing on history and culture at the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania Golden Quill awards. Read the essay.
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Looking for a midwife in Los Angeles who does home birth and has successfully billed insurance! Had my first at @MidwifeCenter and LOVED it. Hoping now to have my second at home (in my childhood home where I grew up). Feel free to repost ❤️
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