Photography by Melissa Blackall
Lani Asunción (they/she) is a Filipinx interdisciplinary artist exploring the intricacies of identity and belonging, confronting the inner weaving of intergenerational trauma with ritualized performance and public art that serve as acts of reclamation. Through transmedia storytelling and research, they create socially conscious work that activates counter narratives of collective resistance to settler colonial foundations and points to collective liberation. Asunción's multimedia practice becomes a conduit for connection and disruption, breaking down barriers and inviting participation. By challenging established narratives and amplifying oppressed and marginalized communities, they seek to create spaces where alternative ethics of care, community healing, and social solidarity can thrive. Asunción was born in the Bay Area in California and raised in Tennessee, Oahu, Hawai’i, and the Ryūkyū Islands 琉球列島 (Okinawa, Japan) and is now located on the East Coast in Boston, Massachusetts.
BIO
Lani Asunción has had solo exhibitions at the Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts (2024), Real Art Ways (2022), Radial Gallery (2021), Brookline Arts Center (2020), Boston Children’s Museum Art Gallery (2019), and New Bedfrod Art Museum (2016). They have participated in the group show CONTACT ZONE: Waikīkī (2018) and was awarded second place in the Cambridge Art Association National Prize Show (2021).
Asunción is a recipient of the MAP Fund Grant (2024), Kala Fellowship Award (2023), Future Frequencies Fellowship from CreateWell Fund and Assets for Artists from MASS MoCA Studios (2022), Artist’s Resource Trust Fund (2021), and Live Arts Boston Grant (2020). They have also held residencies at Cerdeira in Lousã, Portugal (2019), Vermont Studio Center (2018), BigCi in New South Wales, Australia (2016), Santa Fe Art Institute (2015), and Caldera Arts Center (2013).
Revolutionary AYAT, their augmented reality and public performance project was awarded the Public Art for Spatial Justice Grant (2022) from New England Foundation for the Arts. They also received the Transformative Public Art Grant (2021) and Neighborhood Activation Grant (2024) from the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture with the City of Boston, as well as an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2023).
Asunción is the Curator and Public Art Manager of the Un-monument Initiative projects at Pao Arts Center a community partner with the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) with the City of Boston funded by The Mellon Foundation. Asunción is a Visiting Lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art and Design teaching performance, video, and public art in the Fine Arts 3D and Sculpture Departments. They are the Artistic Director and founding member of Digital Soup, a queer BIPOC multimedia art and performance collective, and is also a member of Mobius and BCA Studio Residency (2022-2025). Asunción creates from their live/work studio at Midway Artist Studios located in the Fort Point Arts Neighborhood which resides on the ancestral and unceded lands of the present Massachusett people.
CURRENT PROJECTS
SONG/ LAND/ SEA | WAI Water Warnings (2024-2025) a commissioned piece by the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy is a public art and performative series focusing on the climate crisis and the devastating results of global warming, sea levels rising and coastal flooding resulting in environmental racism connected to gentrification and displacement of communities resulting from the construction of the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway (1954-1959), and further impacted by the Big Dig (1991-2006), a mega-construction project which placed the Expressway underground and built a park on top, The Greenway, which opened in 2008. This work implores viewers to confront the realities of climate change and mobilize toward collective resilience and justice. Climate change is not a distant threat but an urgent reality, exacerbating existing inequalities and disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. Along the Greenway this installation resides across from Chinatown where the effects of environmental racism are keenly felt, with neighboring Roxbury and Dorchester facing the brunt of urban heat islands.
This work transcends mere aesthetics, serving as a call to action. Through its evocative symbolism and participatory nature, it implores viewers to confront the realities of climate change and mobilize towards collective resilience and environmental justice.
This project is supported by a 2024 Neighborhood Activation grant from the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture with the City of Boston and 2024-25 Mass Humanities Grant Expand Massachusetts Stories-Climate Track in support of their oral stories project ‘Water Warnings: Stories of Climate Change in Boston.’
@ lani.asuncion | @revolutionaryayat | @dfp_dutyfreeparadise | digitalsoup.events | @digital.soup
