Meet Local Hero Nominee: Kristina Wong

Nominee Name: Kristina Wong
Title: Founder
Organization/Business: Auntie Sewing Squad
Website:Auntie Sewing Squad
Nominator: Karen Mack

“Kristina is one of the most passionate ‘artivists’ I know. Not only did she organize the Auntie Sewing Squad, making over 55,000 COVID-19 protection masks through sewing circles in her community, she is also using her filmmaking skills to create youth-centric films as part of her ‘Radical Cram School’ series to get out the vote in the next election. It's gratifying to witness an artist having so much impact with her work.”

— Karen Mack, Nominator

About Kristina Wong

Performance artist, comedian and writer Kristina Wong is also an actual elected representative of Wilshire Center Koreatown Sub-district 5 Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles. When the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to her plans to tour the country with her newest one-woman show, Wong decided she was going to take action in helping other people. When during the first weeks of the pandemic people were searching for masks, Wong knew that as a performance artist who makes her own stage props, she had scraps of fabric laying around that could easily be turned into masks, which were offered up for free on her Facebook page. When requests quickly reached the hundreds, Wong knew she needed help and posted a request for volunteers. Starting with 26 people, Wong launched the “Auntie Sewing Squad,” a volunteer group originally intended to be a three-week stopgap that is still sewing and has exploded into a network of hundreds of active “Aunties” across the U.S. Having shipped 250,000 masks to vulnerable communities across the North American continent, Wong has now turned her attention back to the theater and her community. She has become a member of the newly created Center Theatre Group (CTG) Creative Collective, which consists of about a dozen inspiring, innovative and highly collaborative artists shaping the contours of the theatrical landscape of the future. Wong’s one-woman show, “Kristina Wong For Public Office,” previously sidelined by the pandemic, was recently filmed as part of the new online CTG Group Digital Stage series offerings.

More on Kristina Wong

• Kristina Wong's website
• Free, Cathy (2020) “A comedian’s tour was canceled. So she started the Auntie Sewing Squad, cranking out 60,000 masks for vulnerable people.” The Washington Post
• Tran, Diep (2020) “How the ‘Auntie Sewing Squad’ built a massive free mask operation for people the ‘government didn't care about.’” NBC News
• Good Morning America (2020) “Comedian turns laughs into masks.”
• Hines, Bethany (2020) “A volunteer‘sewing squad’distributed more than 55,000 masks to vulnerable communities in 3 months. They're not slowing down.”
• Ta, Amy (2020) “Comedian Kristina Wong sews masks for people in poverty, says it’s about government negligence.” Press Play with Madeleine Brand | KCRW
• Apeles, Teena (2020) “Auntie Sewing Squad Bonds Multiple Generations Together to Fight COVID-19.” KCET
• Beebe, Lisa (2020) “Why We Still Craft in this Digital (Pandemic) Age.” KCET
• “‘Artists and Politicians Have Exchanged Jobs.’” (2020) KCET