A live art installation at Heritage Rose Garden directed by SJSU’s Robin Lasser. Photos of the scene appear on billboards around San Jose. Photo by Robin Lasser
There’s a new art exhibit opening this week in San Jose — but you won’t find it in a gallery. Instead, look up.
Starting August 2 and lasting through the month, billboards throughout the city are featuring art installations created by Robin Lasser, professor of art at San José State, and her longtime collaborator and former student Adrienne Pao, ’05 MFA Photography.
The message behind the art? Celebrate a safe, vaccinated emergence as a community from our “COVID bubbles.”
“The ‘bubble’ represents our social, familial or solitary bubbles that we live in during the pandemic,” Lasser explained.
The art is part of a statewide project aimed at reminding Californians that their actions can save lives. Fourteen artist teams throughout the state created pieces designed to empower their communities to protect one another and to show resilience. The project was developed in partnership with The Center at Sierra Health Foundation.
Members of San Jose’s Vietnamese community appeared in a tableau honoring emergence from the pandemic. Photo by Robin Lasser
“One of the goals was to work with harder hit and under-recognized communities during the pandemic,” Lasser explained.
So she and Pao worked with members of San Jose’s Vietnamese and predominantly Mexican American, as well as other Hispanic and Latino, communities to illustrate a celebratory emergence using traditional clothing, cultural elements and, of course, their signature dress tents. Messages like “Vaccinated, no more loneliness!” are written in Vietnamese, Spanish and English onto either silk lanterns or papel picado.
A rendering of a billboard featuring Lasser’s and Pao’s art installation. Image courtesy of Robin Lasser
The installations were created in public spaces. Lasser invited members of the Vietnamese community to Kelly Park on May 30 for one installation, and Mexican American and other Hispanic and Latino community members to Heritage Rose Garden on June 5 for another. At each public gathering, she invited some attendees to participate in the tableau she and Pao created, while the rest served as onlookers watching the scene come to life.
Then, she took photos.
“We wanted to create an event where those who had been vaccinated could finally be together and celebrate that emergence. It’s a two-pronged experience: We created art with members of these communities, and then we took the art and are now placing it back into those very communities with the billboards.”
While this art is specifically geared towards disproportionately affected populations, Lasser emphasized that her work carries a global message.
A map indicates where the tableaus will be featured on billboards around San Jose. Image courtesy of Robin Lasser
“When something happens to everyone everywhere, it helps us unite, to come together, to understand one another, to have greater empathy. Not that everything needs to have a silver lining, but as I spoke with people while working on this, there was a greater sense of openness and understanding for each other because we are all going through the same thing,” she explained.
She added that she hopes that anyone who spots a billboard can feel a similar celebratory feeling.
“The spirit of the work is intended to provide a sense of magic, to uplift, and imagine a hopeful future as we emerge from our solitary bubbles.”
Explore photos, videos and read more about Lasser’s and Pao’s project.