Pacific Islander and Asian Family Center marks 30 years with celebration, new mural by Alex Chiu

The mural tells the story of the community that has grown up around the Northeast Portland center run by the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization.

September 8, 2024

Amy Wang

Cultural Hubs, Culture, Family, Visual Art

Muralist Alex Chiu says passersby would stop to talk with him as worked on the mural at the Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center in Northeast Portland. "People would pull over in their cars just to tell me I’m doing a great job.” The center will hold a 30th anniversary celebration Sept. 12. Photo courtesy: Sara Sjol, Portland Street Art Alliance — Muralist Alex Chiu says passers-by would stop to talk with him as worked on the mural at the Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center in Northeast Portland. “People would pull over in their cars just to tell me I’m doing a great job,” he says. The center will hold a 30th anniversary celebration Sept. 12. Photo courtesy: Sara Sjol, Portland Street Art Alliance

Just shy of one of Portland’s busier intersections, Northeast 82nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard, a mural in soothing shades of blue faces drivers heading east on Sandy.

The L-shaped mural, 22 feet high and nearly 40 feet wide, fills a previously blank wall and an adjacent retaining wall at the Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center, one of four cultural centers run by the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO). Created in three weeks this summer by Portland muralist Alex Chiu, the mural tells the story of the community that has grown up in and around the center during the past 30 years.

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There’s a portrait of Khanh Le, holding a fan at the top of the mural, who serves as Vietnamese community liaison for Division Midway Alliance, a nonprofit that works toward equity, social resiliency, and prosperity in East Portland. There’s a portrait of Pootnavi Sok, a Lao performer and student at Oregon State University. There are images of mother-and-child Samoan dancers Chiu met at a Festival of Nations celebration in East Portland. There are nods to Bhutanese, Cambodian, Hmong, Micronesian, and Mien people and cultures.

“I love the mural in that it recognizes the communities that were involved in the startup of IRCO and in the makeup of the PIAFC,” said Cayle Tern, a member of IRCO’s board of directors and the center’s advisory council who has been connected with the center since he sought its employment services about two decades ago.

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IRCO commissioned the mural through Portland Street Art Alliance as part of the Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center’s 30th anniversary celebration on Sept. 12. The free and public event will celebrate the center’s role as a service, resource, and cultural hub for Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans in the Portland area.

Jenny Bremner, IRCO’s director of development and communications, said the center engages more than 12,000 clients each year with services and resources that include rent assistance, youth programs, legal services, voter education, leadership development, and more. It does so in a three-story, 10,500-square-foot building where clients can connect with staff who relate to their lived experiences as immigrants and refugees.

Chiu drew on that community as he created the mural.

Alex Chiu incorporated community suggestions, ranging from family traditions to refugee experiences, into the mural. Chiu wove all the suggestions into a design he said went through three or four rounds of revisions. “It is important to me that I create an image that everyone appreciates and identifies with,” he says. Photo courtesy: Sara Sjol, Portland Street Art Alliance — Alex Chiu incorporated community suggestions, ranging from family traditions to refugee experiences, into the mural. “It is important to me that I create an image that everyone appreciates and identifies with,” he says. Photo courtesy: Sara Sjol, Portland Street Art Alliance

First there was his personal history with the center. When he and his wife had their first child a decade ago, they received family services from the center, including parent coaching, lactation support, and child care resources. Getting that kind of help from a culturally specific organization – Chiu is the American-born son of Hong Kong immigrants – was “an awesome thing,” he said.

Next came the community design process for the mural. The center put out a call for images that could be used as reference material and gathered community members’ thoughts on what they hoped the mural would represent: Cultural inclusion. Ways people are involved in the community. Family traditions and activities. IRCO’s history. Immigrant and refugee experiences. Objects important in Asian and Pacific Islander communities and households. The diversity of Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

Chiu wove all the suggestions into a design he said went through three or four rounds of revisions. “It is important to me that I create an image that everyone appreciates and identifies with,” he said.

Finally, it was time to put the mural on the wall. “Painting in public can be very difficult,” Chiu said. “But, you know, people would pull over in their cars just to tell me I’m doing a great job.” Staff at the center would come outside to thank him. When the mural was done, they gathered for a photo in front of it.

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The mural will be officially unveiled at the Sept. 12 celebration, an event that Tern said will be heavy on performances and food.

“Dance and music is such a big part of our communities here, and we’ll have performances from these specific communities,” he said. “And what I am excited about is, although these are traditional performances, these are also the modern interpretations of the traditional performances.”

Attendees will also get to sample dishes from the participating communities. “We like to share,” Tern said.

He added that the event will showcase the breadth of the diversity of Asian and Pacific Islander communities in Portland. That diversity is reflected in the community leaders who plan to attend, the IRCO staff, and Tern and his fellow members of the PIAFC advisory council. Tern, who is Mien, arrived in Portland as a refugee in 1980. Other council members are Vietnamese, Lao, Taiwanese, and Marshallese. The center’s director, Sokho Eath, is Cambodian American.

Each year, more than 12,000 Pacific Islander and Asian Family Center clients use services and resources that include health and wellness programs, such as this one, as well as rent assistance, youth programs, legal services, voter education, and leadership development. Photo by: Christian Chase

The diversity is also reflected in the center’s very name. The center was initially founded as the Asian Family Center, then renamed in 2007 to better reflect the communities it served. Placing “Pacific Islander” first was an acknowledgement, Tern said, that “the needs of Asian American communities and Asian American families have typically overshadowed Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, and we wanted to be the first organization to kind of break away from that.”

Bremner said what she appreciates most about the center is that it was guided and driven by community leaders who not only understood community needs but also sought to create a space that celebrated the community.

“That’s cool,” Bremner said. “It’s something that the community feels ownership over, which is unique.”

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Amy Wang

Amy Wang was an editor and writer at The Oregonian for 25 years, including stints as arts editor and books columnist. She has a special interest in stories that showcase diversity in arts and literature. She lives in Southwest Portland, and writes a Substack newsletter about books called Bookworm at amywang.substack.com.