Self-Portraiture as Self Love with Mel Taing

SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 2024 from 11 am - 2 pm
(This event has passed.)

 Event photos by Ebersole Photography

In this photography & collaging event, participants are invited to celebrate themselves through self-portraits and an opportunity to print their images for a collaging and journaling activity centered on self-love. This art-making activity is designed for AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander) folx to shine a light on their identities and learn the healing powers of taking representation into their own hands with photographer and community artist Mel Taing.

  • INSTRUCTOR

    Mel Taing (she/her) is a Cambodian American photographer, community artist and educator. Mel specializes in creative portraiture that captures the vibrance, radiance and joy of the intersecting communities in her life. Her process is deeply collaborative and focuses on co-creating new, shared visions that become a mirror for her subjects to witness themselves. As a child of Cambodian refugees, she is deeply interested in the resilience that is created through community. Her portrait sessions are healing in action - honoring QTDBIPOC+ (Queer, Trans, Disabled, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) folx and creating spaces for us to play, witness, and celebrate our truest selves. Mel believes that resilience does not always need to center the pain experienced but rather the ways in which we seek joy.

    Beyond her portraiture practice, Mel is currently an educator at the Harvard Ed Portal Artist Pipeline Program, a lead community engagement artist for the Boston Chinatown Cultural Plan, and a freelance photographer documenting artists and arts exhibitions.

    @m.ltaing

  • 590 Washington St, Lynn, MA 01901

    In the heart of Lynn's Arts & Cultural District, the Lynn Museum was founded in 1897 to collect, preserve and illuminate the city's remarkable history.

    The Lynn Museum/LynnArts offers changing exhibitions and innovative youth and adult programs which engage and enrich Lynn's diverse community.

    With history as our guide, we engage the region’s ever-changing community through exhibitions and programs that illuminate the past, celebrate the present, and inform the future.

    @lynnmuseum