Duet (No. 1), 2022, Photograph

This photograph is from a self-portrait series Duets that confronts the monolithic viewing of East Asian culture in America from a queer, Gen Z perspective. Taken in Koreatown, where working class families are constantly burdened by gentrification, I intend to frame Los Angeles as a site of communion for the myriad Asian American identities that arose out of the different waves of Asian immigration, which often go unconsidered in current political discourse. I am interested in how these dynamics, cultural and generational, contradict yet also synthesize a collective queer and gender nonconforming identity among individuals my age.

Scratchers–Ash, 2022, Photograph

Scratchers–Shari, 2022, Photograph

Since the pandemic LA in the past two years has become the epicenter of a growing body of Gen Z "scratchers" (a term referring to self-taught tattoo artists), who are transforming an industry that is notoriously hierarchical and inaccessible. Scratcher culture is closely tied to the underground, queer, rave scene in downtown Los Angeles. I intend to explore how scratchers’ cultural and stylistic subversion of traditional American tattooing acts as a semiotic language that signals kinship among queer individuals in the LA metropole. With tattooing, my community collectively ruminates on our corporeal complexities through a shared sense of deviance.