The BiCultural/BiRacial Profiling Survey is a web project that poses a series of questions that examine changing attitudes toward racial profiling post 9/11. Developed in collaboration with Chris Nojima (Toasted Pixel), this survey provides a forum in which to share concerns about the war against terrorism and generate discussion about issues of race, culture and national identity. How do you profile a terrorist? What does a terrorist look like? Arab Americans, people of color, people of mixed race or people with ambiguous racial features (Latino, Pakistani, South Asian, Afro-Asian, Chinese Latino, etc.) have become the victims of racial profiling and racist violence in the new war on terrorism. As a way to look at the effectiveness and potential dangers of racial profiling, this survey asks for feedback in the form of written responses to these questions, personal profiles and imaginary profiles of terrorists which will be posted in the gallery over the course of the exhibition.

Since September 11, many artists have had to reassess how their work connects to political changes in the world around them. As an artist with a studio not far from the World Trade Center, I was deeply affected by the events surrounding this tragedy. In the aftermath of 9/11, references in the media to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the forced internment of Japanese Americans in relocation camps during World War II, prompted me to think of ways to document public attitudes toward the use of racial profiling in the war against terrorism and in periods of high alert during the war in Iraq.

Like other forms of public art, the Web can be instrumental in building a sense of community, or belonging, where none may have previously existed. The notion of an imagined community where hybridity is the norm is what interests me. As a visual artist, I am committed to projects that reflect multiple points of view and encourage interaction between artists and non-artists. I have collaborated with writers, historians, curators, and people whose "ordinary" stories have become a rich resource for my art. Working within a cross-cultural context allows me to listen to new stories and new voices, which form a strong narrative within my own work. In developing these themes, I try to use the specificity of my experience as an Asian American as a personal space in which to locate broader issues of race and gender; a space through which a glimpse of common ground is made possible.

The BiCultural/BiRacial Profiling Survey has received support from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund/NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The primary goal of this public art project is to bring an unconventional creative process to inner city youth in order to reconcile their restricted access to an arts education with a facilitated program of self-education. Art has been isolated from the general public and relegated to the leisure of the power elite. The creative process and the act of creating art itself are mystified. Rather than functioning as a mode of self-expression, art has become a tool for the perpetuation of class differentiation. Great risks exist when access to art is reserved for the upper classes. The most prevalent result is a generation of youth crippled by their inability to express themselves, believing that they are incapable of creating and that, in the end, their thoughts and emotions are invalid.

This mural project was conceived in response to many of the issues addressed in the correlative show Resident Aliens. The title is a play on the official term for permanent residents in America. While their permanence is legally established, socially and economically these individuals exist as perpetual foreigners generation after generation. For the purposes of this show, I have expanded the term to include not only immigrants but also those who have long been assimilated in the United States, yet exist in a constant and evolving state of alienation. Tomie's work deals with issues prevalent particularly but not exclusively to immigrants in America and the newly refined racism that has emerged since September 11th, 2001.

The youth we are working with are in many ways predisposed to these forms of alienation, if not all of them, unless we are able to provide them with new tools to defend themselves against the shifting imbalances of race and class in America. This project is meant in some way to counteract the processes that continually and systematically divide and subjugate the underclasses. Some of these processes are so institutionalized as to be virtually undetectable by the masses oppressed by their tenets. Providing knowledge of public art and facilitating public art projects implemented by youth are ways of hindering the privatization of art and encouraging the youth to challenge these systems on an intellectual and emotional level.

Asking Tomie to co-direct this project with me had a specific purpose. Aside from her extensive experience in public art and her untiring efforts in community arts and education, we hope to teach the youth public art through two different approaches. Tomie's background and approach to public art arises from a community-based tradition that deals directly with political themes while my own experience with public art comes primarily from graffiti and installation art. It is our hope to combine the aesthetics of the street, installation art, and conventional mural painting in the workshops and the creative process. The result: a hybrid form of expression unconditionally available to the youth that captures the spontaneity of the street while offering them insight into the conventional art world. Most importantly, we are trying to help them think of and develop alternative creative processes so that they understand the validity and worth of their own emotions, experiences, and creations.