Red Envelope Postcards

Shellie Zhang is a Chinese-born multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada.

This installation is an updated version of an earlier work titled The Red Envelope Project, created in collaboration with artist Alvin Luong. Within Chinese culture, red envelopes containing money are often given as gifts among friends and families during celebratory occasions. The Red Envelope Project was a fundraising initiative in which artists designed custom red envelopes to raise money for local community organizations.
Proceeds will be donated by the artist to Native Movement.

Zhang has adapted this project for Alaska by creating two new designs and partnering with the Alaska-based Indigenous advocacy organization Native Movement. The words on Zhang’s cards express ideas of care and the power of collective action to bring about social change.

The only way to survive is by taking care of one another— Chinese-American writer, philosopher, and activist Grace Lee Boggs

People in the movement sustain each other; their spirit is contagious—Japanese-American civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama

If we do not unite, there will be no one else to look out for us— from the 1967 publication Gidra. The quote comes from a representative of the Asian-American Student Alliance, referring to the 1968 Third World Liberation Front student protests.