Penn’s Pan-Asian American Community House hosted its fourth annual mural unveiling on Wednesday.
The April 8 event featured speeches by several PAACH team members and an appearance from Penn President Larry Jameson. The mural, made by PAACH Associate Director and Filipino studies lecturer Vicky Faye Aquino, was created to celebrate United States’ semiquincentennial and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May.
“The entire point of these unveilings is to build this community and create a safe space for people to feel like they belong in any sort of way,” PAACH programming assistant and College sophomore Kelly Chen told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
At the event, Aquino explained that the artwork was meant to “highlight” Penn’s “thriving” South Asian and Central Asian communities.
“We want them to be more visible — not just through words or events — but literally through art and thought,” Aquino told the DP.
The mural — “Shared Roots: A Community Tree of 250 Mandalas” — is made from individual drawings of 250 mandalas that are arranged to form a tree. Mandalas, according to Aquino, symbolize “wholeness, balance, and connection.”
PAACH hosted two coloring events earlier this semester where Aquino and over 100 members of the Penn community drew mandalas for the mural.
Aquino told the DP that the purpose of involving several people in the mural’s creation was to showcase “the beauty of the individual contributions” which came together to “form something larger, vibrant, and meaningful.”
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“When we make art as a group, we address who we are — recognizing our interconnectedness, the community tree,” Aquino said during the event. “From afar, the mural may appear as a single, unified tree, but up close, you can see the uniqueness of each piece that reflects the authenticity of the person who made it.”
Aquino added that the number of mandalas were a reference to America’s 250th anniversary, and a way to “acknowledge the importance of the Asian presence and the Asian immigrants who have also shaped and built America.”
This marks the fourth mural Aquino has unveiled for PAACH’s annual celebrations. Aquino’s past murals — which remain on display at the organization’s hub — feature flowers and a butterfly mural with flags representing Asian and Pacific Islander countries, and a mandala made from 1,000 paper cranes based on a tradition from a Japanese legend.
“I think it’s really good to expose yourself and expand your knowledge about other cultures,” College senior and event attendee Hina Sako said. “At events like this, you learn, but you also meet people through it.”
