Queer? Asian-Americans? Art? Yup.

This blog aims to introduce some great Asian-Amercian queer filmmakers/artists!

[gaysianimagination]

✨ Below is a list on some queer Asian American films/shows/art project recommendations!✨

1. Flow (1996, Dir. Quentin Lee)

2. Comedy InvAsian (2018, Dir. Koji Steven Sakai and Quentin Lee) 

3. Fluidø (2017, Dir. Shu Lea Cheang) 

4. Coming Out Under Fire (1994, Dir. Arthur Dong) 

5. Forbidden City, USA (1989, Dir. Arthur Dong) 

6. Queer South East Asia (”Online literary journal on LGBTIQ+ rights and arts in the South East Asian context”) 

7. Also please check out Dan’s website here!

[gaysianimagination]

Dan Taulapapa McMullin is a poet, artist, sculptress, and film maker currently located in Hudson, New York and California. They self-identify as Fa’afafine, which is a third gender/non-binary identity within Samoa, American Samoa, and the Samoa diaspora. 

Dan’s work focuses on celebrating and shining light on their Samoan heritage and Fa’afafine identity, with a career of 35 years in producing art. Their short film “Sinaela” (2002) received the Best Short Film at the Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival. 

In fact, Dan had worked on a very interesting and exciting project just a year ago on excavating queer Polynesian history and heritage titled “A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia”. The project was exhibited at Hudson Eye as an installation, and recently published as a book! Please check out Dan’s website and queersoutheastasia.com for more info!

Queer identities within the Pacific islands and south/southeast/southwest Asia are so diverse and important, nonetheless hardly mentioned and easily erased. I acknowledge my privilege as being an East Asian immigrant, and endeavour to learn more about the culture and heritage of queer communities and people from these regions. 

*sources: http://queersoutheastasia.com/a-queer-theirstory-of-polynesia, https://www.ruralintelligence.com/community/the-rural-we-dan-taulapapa-mcmullin, and https://www.taulapapa.com/

[gaysianimagination]

Remember Arthur? He’s back! Couldn’t move on without including this Chinese-American legend!!

Arthur Dong is a Chinese-American filmmaker who endeavours to shine light on the history of Asian immigrants in North America and act against anti-2SLGBTQIA+ prejudice. As he focuses on “documenting” Asian American history within the US, he actively uses real footage from historic productions of the past. 

Arthur is famous for his documentary “Forbidden City, USA” (1989), which is record of interviews and footages on the Forbidden City: the iconic San Francisco all-Chinese American night club in the 30s and 40s. 

Arthur points out how a certain amount of surviving performers from the Forbidden City expressed to be gay or lesbian, and how he endeavoured to carefully deliver their queer stories without “outing” them. As a gay Asian American himself, Arthur made sure the proper ethics of producing a documentary was conducted by respecting/honouring the requests of his queer interviewees. This is such an important move, as we see many documentaries where privacy and dignity of queer (specifically Trans folks) people are violated and disrespected (I mean, no offence/full offence to Jennie Livingston and “Paris is Burning”....now that’s a different story for a different Tumblr post;)).

*sources: https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/43528/1/now-apocalypse-series-gregg-araki-karley-sciortino-doom-generation, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0232472/

[gaysianimagination]

Remember how I emphasized the importance of intersectionality? Well here is Shu Lea Cheang, who’s art exactly points to how her identity as being queer AND Taiwanese enables her to tackle oppressive mechanisms like prisons and surveillance cameras. 

Shu Lea Cheang is a Taiwanese-American visual artist and film maker. She was active in New York in the 80s and 90s, and after a few years as a digital nomad, she relocated to France in the 2000s. 

Shu Lea aims to mix and “mess around” with the complexity of gender identities and ethnicity in her multi-media art projects. A few of her notable works are “Color Schemes” (1990), which is a interactive three-channel video installation that examines the complexity of ethnic stereotyping in North America, and “3x3x6″ (2019), which was exhibited at the 2019 Venice Biennale where she was the first female representative of Taiwan. “3x3x6″ is a multi-media installation that articulates how social factors like gender and race can act as “prison confinements” and “surveillance cameras” to the most marginalized identities of the two categories. 

(quote on image is from Shu Lea’s interview with Hyperallergic) 

*sources: https://www.seditionart.com/magazine/shu-lea-cheang-3x3x6 , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shu_Lea_Cheang, and https://hyperallergic.com/503068/at-the-venice-biennale-shu-lea-cheang-surveils-the-surveillance-system/

[gaysianimagination]

NOW! It’s time to look at the talented queer Asian-American artists and their work from 90s (which is like, the queer boom for Asian American art...I guess..?) and onwards!

Quentin Lee is a Hong-Kong Canadian film maker who immigrated to Montreal when he was 15 years old. Quentin’s family was determined to leave Hong Kong after its handover to China was decided. 

Quentin’s art deals with his identity of being a Chinese, openly gay man living in North America. In his interview with LA Weekly, he asserts that people would have expected him to make an autobiographical piece due to his marginalized identity. However, Lee actively rejects these assumptions by producing “Flow” (1996), which is a “non”-autobiographical piece on a gay, Asian film maker and snippets of his work. 

When you are a minority, people frequently expect you to talk about your own history of discrimination and trauma through making art based on it or what not. Well, it’s not actually like that. We can do whatever we want when it comes to art, and it doesn’t always have to be about our “own” stories and lives. (also like we don’t have the obligation to publish our private lives for the sake of educating white people - just a thought!)

*Source: https://www.laweekly.com/how-gaysian-filmmaker-quentin-lee-defies-hollywood-stereotypes/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Lee

[gaysianimagination]

Sooo... a bit of history before we dive into the world of gaysian excellence! 

According to a Medium article on Arthur Dong and his film “Hollywood Chinese” (2008), gay and lesbian Asian American performers and artists were present in venues like the Forbidden City Night Club (the image above is, in fact, a postcard of the place) during the 1940s. However, overt expressions of gender and sexuality through art was not prevalent until the 80s and 90s. 

Marie K. Morohoshi, a former associate director at SFIAAFF (San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival), expresses in an interview that queer Asian American art, specifically cinema, showed a surge in the 1990s. There were productions in the early and late 1980s, but the 1990s was the decade where many Asian Americans were enrolling in film schools and generating content with personal camcorders through genres like “personal documentary” and “personal narrative”.

Sources: https://medium.com/the-establishment/arthur-dongs-films-spotlight-asian-american-and-queer-history-9c158b193a02 / “Creating, Curating, and consuming Queer Asian American Cinema - an Interview with Marie K. Morohoshi” by Ju Hui Judy Han

[gaysianimagination]

An important aspect on taking a look at Asian American Queer artists and their work is acknowledging the intersections of their identities. Queer Asian Americans are not only racial minorities, but also marginalized folks in terms of gender expression and sexual orientation. 

This intersectionality must always be addressed when we examine the historic works of Queer Asian American Artists.  

[Images on post]

This is a simple graphic I made using screenshots of films and art projects from queer Asian American artists. The first photo on the top-left is from the poster for Shu Lea Cheang’s recent interactive artwork “3x3x6″. The bottom left is from the film “Happy Together” by Wong Kar Wai. The top-right is a snippet from Quentine Lee’s “Flow” from 1996. 

[gaysianimagination]

So Oliver from Crazy Rich Asians says that he is the “rainbow sheep” of his *cough* Very Asian *cough* family. How have these rainbow sheeps fought against normalizing and flattening imageries of Asian Americans AND 2SLGBTQIA+ people (at the same time)? This blog will take a look at different rainbow sheeps of the history of Asian American art/cinema and see how they have tackled stereotypes/refused assimilation/and redefined Asian American queerness. 

*Image from ibtimes.