LILY XIE
Love Letters for Our Ancestors is a participatory animated film about all the ancestors, unnamed in the history books, who guide us in creating liberatory movements.
About the Artist
Watch Lily’s presentation during the 2024 Creative Wildfire showcase
Lily Xie (she/her) is a Chinese-American artist and educator whose socially-engaged work explores desire, memory, and self-actualization for communities. In collaboration with local residents and grassroots organizers, she facilitates creative projects with a focus on public space, housing, and racial justice. The work they create together often takes the form of animation, print media, and public art.
Lily is currently an Artist-in-Residence for the City of Boston. Previously, she was a member of the inaugural cohort of Radical Imagination for Racial Justice, a program from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the City of Boston. For her work in collaboration with artists and community members, Lily has been awarded grants from New England Foundation for the Arts, The Boston Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture Transformative Public Art, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Transmedia Storytelling Initiative. Lily’s work has been displayed at the Boston Center for the Arts, Pao Arts Center, Weisner Gallery, and Unbound Visual Arts.
Website | IG: @lolysoups
About the Partner Organization
Boston Ujima Project Is a democratic, member-run organization building cooperative economic infrastructure in Boston, with a mission to return wealth to working-class communities of color.
Website | IG: @ujimaboston
Artist’s Statement
Love Letters for Our Ancestors is a participatory animated film about all the ancestors, unnamed in the history books, who guide us in creating liberatory movements. Artist Lily Xie worked with Mari Gashaw, Cierra Peters, Rei Fielder, and other staff at Boston Ujima Project to design an emergent, collaborative filmmaking process. The audio for the film was collected through short interviews with Ujima members at the Assembly for Black Possibilities, where participants were asked to share a love letter to an ancestor who guides them in the liberatory movement work they do. The visual animation was created with Ujima members at Animating Love, a workshop where participants brought photos of their ancestors and wrote love letters that were collaged into the film. The film debuted at Ujima’s Mattapan Assembly in April 2024. Love Letters for Our Ancestors was created with Boston Ujima Project staff, members, and community members, and stewarded and supported by Creative Wildfire.
