My artistic practice is grounded in a cultural investigation of my politicised identity as a queer person of colour, and how I can feel empowered to reclaim and authentically represent these experiences in the world. Visual culture has been a constant throughout my life; growing up in the evolving internet age and being surrounded by my grandfather’s snapshot photography. Through the lo-fi pixels of my family Microsoft Optiquest computer and the honeyed-magenta of 35mm Agfa film preserved in self-adhesive family albums, my interest in digitally constructed images have fully flourished this year. Materially, I have been reflecting upon the colonial nature of traditional image-making, and instead digitally ‘paint’ with my own hand to envision distant yet radiantly hopeful alternative realities. My images yearn for future liberation, from racial prejudices and heteronormative binaries, with a distinct nostalgia for bygone analogue aesthetics. It is integral to my practice to maintain a sense of belonging for those who are misrepresented or culturally sidelined. Expanding beyond my own singular expression of otherness, I am beginning to explore the unifying hope of collaborative practices and shared experiences of otherness. 

In my ongoing photographic series I’m Half (2018 - ), I find solace in revisiting and editing these orchestrated familial fictions. I’m Half converges identities of the past and present, reframing memory through the digital transcendence of time; affirming a dual connection and disconnection to my Vietnamese cultural heritage and my mother. Merging our milestones through a performative process of posing and manipulating digital images to appear aged, knits together cultural unity despite vast amounts of time passing or oceans travelled. Knowing the suffering my mother has endured since that image was taken left a heavy weight on my chest; she has become so resilient I almost forget she overcame similar obstacles as I do now. Posing for a self-timer image, almost 40 years apart, and marrying these moments together in a single ‘snapshot’, is a comforting replacement for difference and alienation.  

Read more in this beautiful piece written by Federica Caso.