Cityarts Workshop
Founded in 1971, New York, NY
Chi Lai. Arriba. Rise Up! mural process, 1974
Alan Okada, Tomie Arai, Arlan Huang, Karl Matsuda, Tommy Kochiyama, Sam Fromartz/City Arts Workshop
Courtesy Alan and Merle Okada

Chi Lai. Arriba. Rise Up! mural study, 1974
Acrylic on paper
Alan Okada, Tomie Arai, Arlan Huang, Karl Matsuda, Tommy Kochiyama, Sam Fromartz/City Arts Workshop
Courtesy Arlan Huang

In the late 1960s and 1970s, neighborhoods across New York City engaged in mural arts projects led by community activists. Cityarts Workshop, a new non-profit organization established in 1971, hired local artists to create murals by and for communities of color around the city. In the Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhoods, Asian American artists Alan Okada and Tomie Arai were tapped to oversee these mural projects.

Led by Alan Okada, the mural, Chi Lai, Arriba, Rise Up!, depicts Chinese migrant workers on the transcontinental railroad, as well as a vignette of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII. The middle right of the mural illustrates tentacles clutching a U.S. flag, attempting to infiltrate the home of multiracial residents. At the top of the mural, a multiracial coalition of workers breaks free from the confines of the apartment complex. The completed mural, finished in 1974 on Madison Street, was the result of the efforts of over 150 Asian, Black, and Puerto Rican residents in the surrounding neighborhoods who volunteered to paint and contributed their ideas to the mural. 

These Cityarts murals led by Asian American activists were all political in nature, giving a voice to communities long overlooked by local governments.