Art Is Love: What Bad Bunny’s Performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show Reminded Me Of Community, Culture, and Showing Up As Ourselves
February 12, 2026 · Fei Wu
There are moments when art stops being something you visit and becomes something you feel in your body.
Recently, watching Bad Bunny perform at the Super Bowl halftime show made me unexpectedly emotional. Not just because of the music or the production, but because of what it represented. Culture on the biggest stage in America. Identity without apology. Storytelling in a language that millions speak every day, but that hasn’t always been centered on stages like that.
And it made me think about Xiang Li Art. About the past few years. About the people we have met. About the quiet conversations that happen in front of paintings when nobody else is watching.
It made me realize again that art is not just expression. Art is love when it meets people where they are.
When we first started sharing my mom’s empress paintings in the United States, we thought people might connect through history or technique or cultural curiosity. And yes, some people do. But what surprised us most was how often people connected through emotion first.
People stand in front of an empress who suffered and tell us about their own loss.
People buy a card and tell us they are sending it to a friend going through cancer treatment.
People walk into an exhibition not knowing anything about Chinese history and walk out feeling like they just met someone who understood them.
That is something I did not fully understand at the beginning. I thought art had to be explained. Now I see that sometimes art just needs to be present.
Watching the halftime show reminded me that the most powerful art does not try to educate first. It invites first. It says come as you are. I will meet you there.
That is what community art means to us.
When we talk about community art services, it is easy to list things like exhibitions, workshops, school visits, public art projects. But the real work happens in moments that are hard to measure.
It happens when a child runs toward a dragon painting before they know what dynasty it came from.
It happens when someone sees a silk portrait and suddenly starts telling us about their grandmother.
It happens when someone says quietly, I needed this today.
Over the past few years, we have been incredibly fortunate. We have exhibited in places many artists dream of. Harvard Museums. The Museum of Fine Arts. The New England Botanic Garden. Universities. Community spaces. City buildings. Libraries. Cultural events. Every single one of those spaces matters.
But what matters more is what happens inside those spaces. The conversations. The memories. The feeling that art can belong to everyone, not just people who already feel comfortable walking into museums.
My mom has always said art is about love. Not money. Not status. Not trends. Love.
I used to think that sounded poetic. Now I think it is very literal.
Because when someone tells us that a painting helped them process grief, that is love.
When a teacher tells us students felt proud seeing Asian history represented in a new way, that is love.
When someone who has never heard of an empress before feels seen by her story, that is love.
The Super Bowl is massive. Loud. Commercial. Fast. But even there, what people remember most are the moments that feel human. The moments that feel like someone is telling the truth about who they are and where they come from.
Community art is like that too. Just quieter.
Not every stage is global. Sometimes the most important stage is a school hallway. A local gallery. A botanical garden gift shop. A community tour with a small group of people who decided to spend their afternoon looking closely at something beautiful and complicated and real.
And honestly, sometimes that is enough to change someone’s day. Sometimes that is enough to change how someone sees themselves.
If there is one thing this year keeps teaching me, it is this. Art does not need permission to matter. It does not need to be understood by everyone. It just needs to be honest.
When art is honest and when it meets people where they are, it becomes something bigger than an object or a performance. It becomes belonging. It becomes memory. It becomes healing.
It becomes love.
And that is why we keep doing this work.