Ponnapa Prakkamakul creates mural for Boston’s Chinatown
The mural, titled Where We Belong, was completed in early July.
Oxford Properties Group in partnership with the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) have commissioned Ponnapa Prakkamakul MLA 11 to create a site-specific mural on the former Ho Toy Noodle Company building in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Mark McGowan, the Vice President of Development for Oxford Properties, the company who owns the building at 79 Essex Street, knew that they needed to do something with the space while the company decided what its “second act” would be. McGowan reached out to Angie Liou, Executive Director of ACDC, a Boston Area non-profit that works to build communities by claiming spaces in ways that reinforce community and identity, for ideas on who they could work with. They connected with Thai artist and RISD graduate Ponnapa Prakkamakul for the concept and creation of a mural that would help ensure that the building had a positive impact on the neighborhood.
ACDC connected Prakkamakul with local residents and businesses, with a special focus on youth voices in the community. Through the lens of her landscape architecture background, Prakkamakul looked at the streetscape and considered how the community would experience and engage with the outdoor space and the mural. The history of the building as the Hoy Toy Noodle factory helped to focus her work on noodles. She was inspired not only by the history of the place and the significance of the noodle in Chinese culture, but also by the variety of memories shared with her in the youth focused workshops. These memories often centered around noodle traditions in their families, and built connections among the youth group members as they realized the many ways they shared these traditions with others in the group. Her work was also informed by the conversations she had with neighbors of the building and their stories of the Ho Toy Noodle company’s owners, the Wong family, and their connections to the community.
The completed work features stylized noodles which culminate in the figure of a dragon. Prakkamakul collaborated with Judy Wong, calligraphy artist and Chairman of Chinese Calligraphy Association of Boston, to weave the memories and traditions shared with her into the mural.
By using not only the history of the building and the neighborhood but also the stories shared through community workshops Prakkamakul, McGowan, and Liou hope to foster a sense of ownership over the mural in the community.
