crystal bi and Dzidzor

crystal bi

crystal bi (she/they) is a multimedia artist working in the public realm. Her participatory art projects explore themes of imagination, creative archiving, and belonging. Her practice includes creating space for dreaming in public, engaging with archival materials, weaving with natural materials, designing printed media, installing interactive sculptures, and sewing translucent fabrics to float on bodies of water.

As a public artist, professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Practicing Methodologies Lead with Design Studio for Social Intervention, and former art educator at Boston Public Schools, crystal works with others to design interventions that practice possible futures.

crystal has received grants for her public art projects through the Public Art for Spatial Justice and Creative City cohorts at New England Foundation for the Arts, Transformative Public Art Program through the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture, Live Arts Boston through The Boston Foundation, Parks Equity + Spatial Justice cohort through Olmsted Now and more. 

headshot by tarik bartel

Dzidzor 

Department of Public Imagination (DPI) - a public art project - imagines and prototypes new infrastructure for imagination work in Boston. DPI’s activations invite folks to add to a living archive through an installation of the Dream Portal Phone Booth and live soundscape events, which encourage collaborative envisioning, rest, and reflection.

Founded by Dzidzor Azaglo and crystal bi, Department of Public Imagination holds activations in Boston that make space for horizontal imagination work. Often our communities are reshaped by top-down design. Horizontal imagination work, by contrast, is a result of communities designing and imagining what they need based on deep local knowledge. For 3 years, crystal and Dzidzor have curated rest spaces as a way to invite participants to rest, dream, and imagine as a tool to create new worlds or ways of being. 

As a part of the Design for Social Intervention’s Prototype lab in July and August, DPI activated 545 Columbia rd. The activation featured panel discussions on community imaginations in the present, Tea blending workshops on imagination, Movement meditation on imagination and a jam session that was inspired by Imagination. We invited people to remember the ways that imagination has been used to shift and transform the landscape of Boston and invite them to also use the same tool of imagination and dream towards the future. 

headshot by Aigbokhai