Dave Kyu

Dave Kyu

Participant
2012-2015, 2017
Arts in Philadelphia
Community
Social Practice

Dave Kyu is a socially engaged artist, writer, & project manager based in Philadelphia. Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the US, his work explores the creative tensions of identity and community in public space. His own creative projects have found him commissioning skywriting planes to write messages 10,000 feet over Philadelphia, and doing every- thing Facebook told him to do for a month.He has made public art with communities for Asian Arts Initiative, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and the City of Philadelphia. His writing has been published in Generocity, the Artblog, and the Philadelphia Citizen.

Projects
Write Sky, photo by Colette Fu

Write Sky, 2012-2014

Inspired by input from a diverse range of community members, Write Sky is your friendly neighborhood skywriting project. Five neighborhood groups selected from the call for participants agreed upon three uncommon messages to imprint into their common sky above their Philadelphia neighborhood known as: Callowhill, Chinatown North, The Eraserhood, The Loft District, and Trestletown. Write Sky occurred on September 14, 2014, at approximately 12:40pm. Three messages were revealed over Philadelphia, and were visible for up to 15 miles in all directions.

Those three messages were:
1. WHEN YOU WISH UPON A PARK, message by Friends of the Rail Park
2. SCIENTIA (knowledge)正义(justice) IT TAKES A VILLAGE, message by Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School and Roman Catholic High School
3. STILL HERE, message by Hive76, with artists Jacque Liu, Jaime Alvarez, Sarah Kate Burgess, and Mary Smull.

Sign of the Times

Sign of the Times, 2014-2015

Sign of the Times is your friendly neighborhood billboard project. The signboard started in a gallery exhibition at Asian Arts Initiative from September 4 - October 23, 2015. The signboard collected messages from visitors at Asian Arts Initiative, as well as from a local bar, the Trestle Inn. Each day, the signboard featured a new community message. At the end of the exhibition, the sign-board was driven around the City of Philadelphia, displaying one of three community messages selected from the exhibition.

A More Perfect Union gallery

A More Perfect Union, 2017

Dave Kyu curated the Summer 2017 exhibition A More Perfect Union: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia an exhibition exploring the themes of interracial marriage and relationships and various aspects of interracial identity; an identity made possible at least in part by the Supreme Court decision to invalidate laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the United States.

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Related
A painting of a colorful mobile of stars and planes hanging over a city scape. - Hiro Sakaguchi - Lullaby
Exhibition
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A More Perfect Union

Grow Food, Meei Ling Ng, Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission

Social Practice Lab (2012-2018)