In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Mission spotlights Asian-American artist Phingbodhipakkiya, whose work speaks for forgotten histories.
As Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month comes to a close, the spotlight remains on the rich histories, traditions, and contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders across the United States and the diaspora. Multidisciplinary artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya is among those amplifying these voices, using her work to celebrate the often-overlooked stories, rituals, and cultural practices of the AAPI community—shaped by her own Asian American heritage.
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, who goes by @alonglastname on her socials, is a Brooklyn-based transdisciplinary artist, activist and storyteller born in Atlanta to Thai and Indonesian parents. She expresses artistically with murals, public art campaigns and open installations, most of which she proudly exhibits outside the ticketed doors of galleries and museums.
On the streets of NYC her public art campaigns Still Believe in Our City (2020) and We are More (2021), postered artwork as a reminder of respect, particularly to the AAPI communities, after the Asian-hate spread during and after COVID-19, with the first case reported in China. Eye-catching posters lined bus shelters, subway stations and city walls, depicting artistic graphics of Asian people, with statements such as ‘I did not make you sick’. Her 2020 campaign aimed to bring the city back together, promoting interaction with the posters, each with a QR code leading to a forum where New Yorkers can submit the reasons why they still believe in NY.
We are More (2021) was focused on asian stereotypes, and the works can still be found at an ongoing Raise Your Voice exhibit at the Museum of the City of NY.
Larger scale installations such Time Owes Us Remembrance (2024), a jungle-like mural which soared 100 feet in tiers in the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and Of Soil and Sky (2024), a “living monument”, both intertwined the very fabric of Phingbodhipakkiya’s own Asian-American lineage, and her travels around Thailand.
Mission: How has your heritage and growing up Asian American inspired your work?
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya: Growing up as the daughter of Thai and Indonesian immigrants in Norcross, Georgia, I often felt suspended between worlds—immigrant and American, Thai and Indonesian. This duality manifests in my art as suspended forms and threads that connect disparate communities. My heritage inspires me to create works that honor the unseen labor and enduring spirit of marginalized communities.
Mission: How did your travels through Thailand inspire your works?
AP: In 2023, I embarked on a deeply transformative journey across 17 provinces and 42 textile communities throughout Thailand, my father’s homeland, immersing myself in the rich, living traditions of matrilineal inheritance. This experience was about more than textiles or technique; it was a profound encounter with the hands and hearts of the Mae Mae, master women weavers, whose knowledge, care, and stories have been passed down through generations.
Honoring this lineage became a sacred act of remembrance and resilience. I was privileged to bring nearly 100 Mae Mae to Bangkok to witness the forest of memory and community that their collective wisdom inspired in my work.
This journey reshaped how I understand inheritance, not just as the passing down of objects or skills, but as the transmission of love, ritual, and collective memory.
Time Owes Us Remembrance, the monument that emerged from this experience, stands as a testament to matrilineal ties that bind communities and generations, insisting on the visibility of those too often unseen.
Mission: What kept you believing in your city during COVID, and how did that help you creatively?
AP: Even in the ugliest moments of the pandemic, I saw New Yorkers show up for each other with compassion, courage, and an unshakable sense of community. At the same time, I witnessed a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate. My own family was harassed. I was harassed.
That tension between hope and harm became the foundation for I Still Believe in Our City, a public art campaign I created in partnership with the NYC Commission on Human Rights.
Creating the series helped me process grief and transform it into something restorative. It reminded me that art can hold pain, honor truth, and spark connection. Believing in New York, in its people and its capacity for solidarity, kept me grounded and creatively driven. We were hurting, but not powerless. I saw how art could help my community and my city begin to heal.
Mission: How or why is it important to you that a lot of your work is accessible for free, outside of museums and galleries?
AP: Everyone, regardless of background, income, or education, deserves access to art. Not just in pristine white-walled galleries, but in everyday places—in subway stations, parks, across construction fences and community walls—because that is where life unfolds. Art in those spaces has the power to interrupt, to inspire, to insist: you matter.
Many of us grew up never seeing ourselves reflected in museums or art history books. We were told, explicitly or not, that art wasn’t for us. My work seeks to rewrite that narrative. I want to fill public spaces with color, story, memory, and presence—to create environments where people feel seen and held, even just for a moment. I want a kid walking to school to look up at a mural and feel powerful. I want someone rushing through a crowded train station to stop and breathe because a piece of art helped them slow down.
I believe cultivating experiences that engage audiences directly is essential to building strong, resilient communities. We are living through a loneliness epidemic—one where connection is scarce and precious. Participatory art becomes a space to gather, to share stories, to build empathy, and to remind us that we can show up for each other.
When my work lives outside traditional institutions, it’s because I want it to encounter people in the flow of their everyday lives—not only in spaces they’re expected to enter. Because the street can be a sanctuary. Because wonder, joy, and affirmation should not be scarce resources. They belong to all of us.
Home page image and image above, Time Owes Us Remembrance and I Still Believe in Our City, courtesy of the artist. Above top banner image, Raise Your Voice, photo by Brad Farwell for Museum of the City of New York.
