About

What do I do?

I am an artist, designer, writer, and educator living in Los Angeles. I make things that help people understand complex systems, re-orient themselves to places, and participate in group decision-making.

Latests

• There are Two Sides to Everything, including Life - an audio guide to the Schindler House, MAK Center 2022


• Seeing the Shape of Our World: Democracy and Civic Imagination, a public conversation with Rosten Woo and Danielle Allen December 2021


• Working on the development of a Memorial to the Victims of Chinese Massacre of 1871 2021


• Past Due released, the final report of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Civic Memory Working Group that I co-chaired, 2021


• Americans for the Arts, Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming communities, 2021


• Stanton Fellowship 2020


• How to House 7,000 people in Skid Row 2020


• Huntington Utopias
  The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens named Los Angeles arts organization Clockshop as its partner for the fourth year of The Huntington's /five initiative. Artists invited to participate in this year's project are Nina Katchadourian, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Rosten Woo, along with writer Dana Johnson and Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles Robin Coste Lewis. Each participant will create new work based on research in The Huntington's collections that will be presented in public programs and an exhibition scheduled to be on view Nov. 10, 2019–Feb. 25, 2020.


• Lab and Lunch: Common Sensing A Conversation with Historian Paul N. Edwards and Artist Rosten Woo
  Thursday, January 31, 2019 • Noon
  The Exploratorium
  This event is free and open to the public. If you plan to attend, please RSVP.


• Mutual Air Kickoff and Listening Party
  Sunday, September 30, 2018
  4:00 pm
  Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)
  1000 Oak Street, Oakland, Lecture Hall
  This event is free and open to the public. If you plan to attend, please RSVP.


• Takachizu project with Little Tokyo Service Center closing party and website launch.


• This Park is Made By People, a sculpture and audio tour commemorating the Chinatown Yards Alliance, opens at Los Angeles State Historic Park


• The Back 9, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Poverty Department opens in downtown Los Angeles.


• Two projects to be featured at the upcoming Cooper Hewitt show By the People: Designing a Better America”, Mapping the Measure of America and What is Affordable Housing?


• CUP has won the NATIONAL DESIGN AWARD for Corporate and Institutional Achievement - featuring these three projects: What is Affordable Housing?, Sewer in a Suitcase, and vendor power! amongst many others


• My essay "Naming Los Angeles" appeared in the book LAtitudes by Heyday Press.

Official Bio
Rosten Woo is a designer, writer, and educator living in Los Angeles. He produces civic-scale artworks and works as a collaborator and consultant to a variety of grassroots and non-profit organizations. including the Advancement Project, the American Human Development Project, the Black Workers Center, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, as well as the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and various piers, public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls, and parks in New York and Los Angeles. His work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a New York Based non-profit organization dedicated to using art and design to foster civic participation, winner of the 2016 National Design Award for institutional achievement. His book, "Street Value," about race and retail urban development, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010.

He teaches art and design at the California Institute of the Arts, Pomona College, and Art Center College of Design and has lectured internationally at such institutions as the Netherlands Architectural Institute, Brown University, the University of Chicago, MIT, Princeton, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the California College of the Arts, and the Chicago Art Institute. He has served on the boards of the Los Angeles Forum, Place in History and Groundswell Community Mural Project.

contact
You can send me an e-mail here.
I'm on facebook and twitter, sort of.
My phone # is 718-208-5769.

We Have No Art
We do everything as well as we can.