Lily Xie

Lily Xie is a Chinese-American artist and educator whose socially-engaged work explores desire, memory, and self-actualization for communities at the margins. In collaboration with local residents and grassroots organizers, she facilitates creative projects with a focus on public space, housing, and racial justice. The work they create together often takes the form of illustration, print media, video, and installation.

Lily is currently a City of Boston Artist-in-Residence. Previously, she was a member of the inaugural cohort of Radical Imagination for Racial Justice, a program from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the City of Boston. For her work in collaboration with artists and community members, Lily was part of New England Foundation for the Arts’ Creative City 2020 cohort for artists creating socially-engaged public art, and has been awarded grants from The Boston Foundation’s Live Arts Boston program, the Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture Transformative Public Art, NEFA’s Public Art for Spatial Justice, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Transmedia Storytelling Initiative. Lily’s work has been displayed at the Boston Center for the Arts, Pao Arts Center, Weisner Gallery, and Unbound Visual Arts.