Jeremy Chan Peng Chu

Singapore born, artist and photographer Chu explores cultural space production in-between the processes of change, and is interested in Chinese diasporal space and collaborative practice.



Sifting the Inner Belt
June 17 – July 31, 2005
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17, 6PM – 8PM

Mills Gallery • Boston Center for the Arts

Organized by Hiroko Kikuchi & Jeremy Chi-Ming Liu, Jeremy Chan Peng Chu, Catherine D'lgnazio, Natalie Loveless, Kim Szeto, and William Ho

“Community doesn’t mean understanding everything about everybody and resolving all the differences; it means knowing how to work within differences as they change and evolve.”
- Lucy R. Lippard

Sifting the Inner Belt is the culmination of a year-long, site-specific social performance and research art project consisting of a series of performance interventions and performance-based research projects, which closely observe and examine, i.e. sift, the South End neighborhood with an emphasis on creating emotional, conceptual and physical bridges between the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) and the Berkeley Street Community Garden (BSCG).

“Inner Belt” refers to the ill-conceived and never completed highway project from 1948-1971 that would have created an inner beltway highway around downtown Boston and between the South End and Lower Roxbury. In the process of the failed project, hundreds of homes were destroyed, many families displaced, and yet, because the project was stopped, over one hundred gardens have sprung up. The foundations of these homes, the spirit of these families, and the legacy of the impact remain today.

Conceived by Hiroko Kikuchi and Jeremy Chi-Ming Liu in the summer of 2004, Sifting the Inner Belt was developed as a collaboration of artists, activists and community residents: Jeremy Chan Peng Chu, Catherine D’lgnazio, Natalie Loveless, Kim Szeto, and William Ho. It is based upon ideas of audience participation, communication, and political intention, and is constructed through a generative process involving dialogue and community outreach through specific efforts, including research and interactive performance art. The exhibition in the Mills Gallery includes site-specific installations, video projection, sound, photography, written documentation/books, and a display of final and in-progress research. A series of performance events will occur throughout the show in and around the BCA and the BSCG.

Sited within a block of the BSCG, the BCA has been acting as a catalyst and incubator for visual and performing arts for the past 35 years. Outreach and integration of multiple communities is one of the primary tenets of the BCA’s mission. The Mills Gallery provides a platform for artists, curators and organizations that need support and value collaboration. The BCA is pleased to be a partner in presenting Sifting the Inner Belt, which presents works of art that are autonomous from, yet relevant to, the community-at-large and the time we live in.

For more information on Sifting the Inner Belt please visit siftingtheinnerbelt.com.

For more information on the BCA, please visit www.bcaonline.org.