Reacting, Responding, Reflecting

Dear friends, family, colleagues & strangers ~
I have been oscillating between this variety of emotions/thoughts nearly every hour in the past week:

(1) OUTRAGE. Watching white supremacy in action and constantly tracing the steps of how imperialism and colonialism forced my family here to this country, only to know that at America’s core, we are not welcome and we are not safe.

(2) GRIEF. Centering my heart and feelings on the lives that were lost. What does it look like to attend to the IMPACT of these violent acts rather than focusing only on the intent of the killer? Reading, over and over, the names of the human beings who were killed and seeing my face in theirs, seeing my face in their families. I will name them here, for you and for me and for them. Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Yaun, Paul Michels, Yong Ae Yue, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim. I hold you and our whole collective community in my heart.

(3) SOLIDARITY. Reflecting constantly on the experience of my Black, Brown & Indigenous, Queer + Trans colleagues/friends who *know* deep in their hearts exactly how I feel right now. I’m coming out of this week feeling more love, more compassion, more tenderness and more commitment to fighting alongside my QT+BIPOC colleagues and friends. Your battle is my battle. I thank you for being the first ones to text me, the first ones to ask how I’m doing. The biggest love goes to @chillerthanthou for holding space for me in a way no one else could.

(4) SHAME & GUILT. Feeling the full force of my perceived inactions and general inability to immediately respond to this moment with integrity and a clear call to action. I felt so shameful at my past inaction for my own community, and roped in all these feelings of not being Khmer enough to even call myself Cambodian in the past. I felt guilty because I permanently feel that I never do enough. I’m an artist, not an activist, and yet I still feel that so much more can be done by my own hands. I could be having more conversations with my white counterparts, I could be educating myself more on legislation and current events and I could especially be donating more.

(5) EMBARRASSMENT & DEFLECTION. I had no idea how to respond to my friends and colleagues who reached out to me. Honestly, I was embarrassed and confused. I kept asking myself, “Do I deserve this? Isn’t what I’m feeling just a fraction of what Black, Brown & Indigenous people feel in this country? What do I say back?” In the end, I can’t say enough how meaningful it is that anyone sent me anything. It meant so much to me that you heard the news, you saw my face reflected in the lives that were lost, and sent me compassion. Thank you. It’s hard for me to accept, but thank you.

(6) BITTERNESS & RESENTMENT. I’m also a little embarrassed to say that I’m holding some bitter, resentful feelings towards the people who have yet to say anything to me. Another looming thought: Don’t check in on me or your BIPOC friend only because someone who looks like us was brutally murdered and the social media buzz made you feel guilty and then, to make YOURSELF feel better you checked in. Don’t remain silent for fear of “saying/doing the wrong thing” or not wanting to “take up space.” Tell me you love me. Tell me you heard the news and that I can lean on you. Tell me you are there for me today and all days. And then of course, do the work.

(7) ‘DOING THE WORK’. It will look different for each and every one of us. No one is exempt from this regardless of the intersection of their identities. While I’m usually 100% happy to do it, I’m tired AF of coaching my white friends on how to respond to this moment or any moment when a BIPOC citizen gets brutally murdered or assaulted. I’m tired of the labor being put on my shoulders for the work that white folx should be continuously doing. But I’ll put what I do here in case it might be helpful.
- Read Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong or The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen or Khmer American poetry by Princess Moon or Sokunthary Svay or Monica Sok.
- Watch the PBS Documentary on the Chinese Exclusion Act. This traces the history of how Asians first came to this country and how the treatment of Asians nearly 200 years ago is still happening today.
- Donate to organizations/groups that support and aid AAPI communities and also Black, Indigenous and Brown communities. A few of my favorite organizations/groups that have personally touched my life are AARW, Dorchester Art Project, Pao Arts Center, CALAA, SEARAC, Arts Connect International, MassArt’s Justice Equity & Transformation Office.

Thank you for reading.

2020; the year of limitations (part 2)

This year, I learned the phrase “the body is not an apology” from the poet Sonya Renee Taylor. It struck me immediately. As a person who is chronically apologizing for things (anything, you name it), I loved the idea of reclaiming my body and not being afraid to take up space. The phrase made me think of my body with more love, more tenderness, and more respect. That being said, I’ve been wanting to apologize to my own body for most of this year. 

I keep wanting to say, “Dear body. I’m so sorry for shutting you up in the house and never leaving for days or weeks at a time. I’m so sorry, dear body, that I’m consuming so much food and weed and subjecting you to hours upon hours of Netflix and anime on Hulu. I’m sorry, dear body, that I’m withholding you from hugs, handshakes, and kisses. I’m sorry, dear body, that everyday I flood with you with anxiety and stress and the feelings of helplessness blues. I’m sorry, dear body, for all the times I knew a walk would help you, but I decided to stay inside because I’m too scared to go outside.” 

But what I really want to say right now, on the last few days of 2020, is this:

Thank you, dear body for enduring. Thank you for being resilient and taking this year on the best you could. Thank you for the days you decided to get up, take a shower and actually get dressed. Thank you for the days you decided to crawl onto the couch to doom scroll and eat all of your feelings. Thank you for the days that you called your friends and laughed and cried. Thank you for the days you still made art and were brave enough to share it. Thank you for the days where you didn’t make art, and hid it on your hard drive for a later day. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was shit to you, and this entire year was shit to you, and you’re still here. 

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july
was

• getting tested (negative) and escaping to the ocean

• experiencing joy and feeling completely shocked by it

• sun, spliffs, seafood and sleepy naps

• heavy summer rain and night street shadows

• masks & distanced humans & artwork

• an afternoon of green onions, life chats and momo

august
was

• artists! artists! artists! for the area code art fair x space us storefront projects  

• basking in the hot sun and glory of witnessing incredible artists of color thrive and create their works

• thoroughly enjoying life talks with the super smart & incredible destiny palmer about the intersection of racism, sociopathy and serial killers

september 
was

• witnessing summer end and constantly marveling at how different the world had become

• carving out precious time in the studio to create new works of art with new brilliant people

october 
was

• realizing that summer was long over and winter fast approaching

• ragnar’s The Visitors coming back to the ICA and my dream gig of photographing

• camping for the first time and crying when we had to leave

• taking aimee to mt auburn cemetery and venting to each other about life, family and, love

• connecting with two of my favorite cambodian artists and capturing them in their beauty

• photographing my dear friend’s amazing clothing collection Trued Apparel

november
was

• getting inspired by joan didion and photographing paige & her beautiful new kitten theo like it was a life magazine editorial

• Meeting & photographing an incredible Armenian musician named Astghik Martirosyan

• Coming back to the ica to photograph the exhibition i’m yours (just before the ICA closed again in the past few weeks!)

december
is

• becoming a wife and gaining a husband (!! can u believe it!?)

• feeling the weight of this entire year & knowing that we’re far from the end of this pandemic still

• eating 100% of my feelings & more

• desiring to make space for gratitude even in the face of all limitations

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To you (if you’re still amazingly reading this far to the end):

Thank you for enduring. Thank you for being resilient and taking this year on the best you could. Thank you for working with the limitations of this year. And most of all, thank you for reading.

2020; the year of limitations (part 1)

I’ve been writing myself into circles for the past three weeks trying to figure out the best way to sum up this year, to reflect all that I have felt and seen and heard and won and missed. All I have come up with, concretely at least, is this phrase - “The Year of Limitations.” Limitations are a funny thing - sometimes helpful (restrictions  can allow us to be wonderfully creative) and sometimes horrible (restrictions that prevent us from living life fully, or with any sense of peace or joy). All that I have experienced and witnessed this year is a direct result of limitation. Whether it was my own limitations, the limitations of others, or the limitations of the entire socioeconomic system we live in… I have tested and experienced the most amount of limitations than ever before. I still feel like I am constantly negotiating the right to be okay. To be simply average. To be neither super happy nor super upset. I’ve spent much of this year running back and forth between grief and high delight, and to be completely honest, I am tired as fuck. I’m terribly anxious about the world, about money, about the health of my friends and family. But I still feel like this is important to do - to take the time to reflect, process, and document. What else should an artist do?

Joan Didion, in her essay On Keeping a Notebook, wonders about the reasons behind why she writes down memories and thoughts. She says that the main reason was, “Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.” I wonder as a photographer if this is also the same reason why I take photos. There’s something so beautiful and simple and complete about that notion, so I’ll choose (for now) to say that this is my intention. To remember what it was like to be me, in this year of limitations, the year 2020.

Below is a month by month break down of 2020. Please enjoy.

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january
was

• driving along the merrimac river for three days collecting hundreds of vintage drinking glasses for an incredible artwork by Evelyn Rydz in an exhibition called local ecologies

• photographing dear artist friends in their studios (@alwazebemybb, @iglootime) and dream artist heroes at the ica (carolina caycedo, tschabalala self)

• feeling hopeful for my first year of freelancing

february 
was

• leaving my phone & wallet behind in a lyft at 4am before a flight to managua, nicaragua

• experiencing paradise at cat’s beautiful home in san juan with my love, old friends & new friends

• reading for hours and hours in the sun 

• still processing the experience of leaving a toxic job and wondering if i made the right choice

march 
was

• “the beginning of the end, the rise and the fall…” lol anyone get my reference? but truly, it was the beginning of so many endings (temporary and permanent) that i had never anticipated

• running around south station on march 11 with momo, trying to capture the idea of yellow peril and what it means to be asian & wearing a mask (before we understood how vital they were) 

• timidly entering my new studio space and missing the rest of the world

april 
was

• my love getting laid off from his job and falling directly into the quarantine arms of sourdough bread making

• my birthday zoom call (which was strange and funny and joyful and sad all at once)

• fear and unknown and not taking really any photos at all

may
was

• creativity coming for me full force at the crossroads of experimentation and spirituality

• learning how to create intentions based off of how i want to feel rather than shit i want to get done

• durians and dear friends on video calls

june 
was

• processing

• still processing the murder of george floyd

• witnessing others’ guilty knee-jerk reactions & performative activism & useless black squares

• witnessing my own guilty knee-jerk reactions & performative activism

• sitting with pain, sharing pain, and holding space for the pain of others 

• gathering at different protests for black lives, trans lives and feeling so empowered and helpless at the same time

• thinking, “here are all these people who seemingly believe in the same BLM movement, and that’s cool, but don’t we all know that this isn’t enough? are all of us non-black people going to go home and think we’re done and feel good about ourselves again?”

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