By UNE Staff Reporter
A Juried Art Competition featuring “Stop the Hate”, co-organized by KJC International, Inc. and West California Academy of Art and Design, concluded with an award ceremony today in San Gabriel.
Hate crimes reported in California increased 32.6% from 2020 to 2021, and anti-Asian hate crimes even dramatically spiked 177.5% in 2021, according to a report release by California Department of Justice.
This was the first juried art competition featuring “Stop the Hate” organized by West California Art and Design in collaboration with KJC International, said Wang Lei, the president of the academy. The competition drew an active participation of local high school students in Southern California, who all demonstrated their understanding of social justice and racial equity and equality through art works.
Among them, five students were chosen to be the winners, namely, Stella Wu, Helen Liao, Jason Liu, Jenny Guan and Irene Zhou.
“In recent years, verbal violence and physical attack targeting minorities in America has apparently increased. Hate crimes and incidences not only hurt the victims themselves, but the community as a whole,” said Jennifer Liu, the founder of KJC International, a media company headquartered in San Dimas. “The society calls for equality, diversity and inclusiveness. The purpose of this art competition is to motivate younger generation to raise the Stop the Hate awareness through visual arts.”
Local elected officials and community leaders, including Allen Wu, mayor of Walnut, John Wu, vice mayor of San Gabriel, Tony Ding, councilmember of San Gabriel, Florence Lin, community relations manager of Asian Youth Center (AYC), Robert Liu, president of Chinese American Education Association, professor of East Los Angeles College, Wang Ximeng, president of American Chinese Experts Association, Sun Wei, president of U.S. China Trade Culture and Arts Association, Linda Lin, international spiritual education instructor, and Omar Gallegos, vice president of West California Academy of Art and Design, attended the award ceremony, and shared their inputs on how to stop the hate, and how to make available the helping resources to victims.
Stella Wu，the Grand Prize winner said , ” In my opinion, I think stop hate can me many meaningful things. Maybe you do not get my pieces idea, but it means to stop hating yourself. Why did I choose this topic? This is a good question, I have been trying to think about a unique topic surrounded by stop hate. The category is very generalized, it did take me a while to settle it down. Nowadays teenagers like us are losing self confidence, they would always try to climb up to somewhere that does not give a good future for, its really ok to be upset by anything but just please give some self love, sometimes you don’t need to think about others feelings that much, even it might be a bit selfish, but thats just how it is, you should take care and satisfy yourself first. Now on to the drawings, as you guys can see i choose the flowers that all having a meaning of self love or gaining much. On the right side, you can see it represents darkness and threats, thats not what we want, take a step forward and everything will be alright, forget about the past, theres many things that will gives you joy. ”
“My art piece is based on the togetherness and help for one another,” said Jason Liu, one of the winners. “I want to show in my work the ability to care about each other, help each other, and spread love in daily life instead of hate.”
“I want my art to be seen as a symbol of hope to those who are suffering from pain caused by hatred,” Irene Zhou introduced. “And I want people to know they should love themselves and be proud of who they are.“
This “Stop the Hate” project was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.
