{"id":84066,"date":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/84066\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","slug":"what-could-you-create-imagine-with-no-boundaries-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/84066\/","title":{"rendered":"What could you create, imagine, with no boundaries? \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early 2000s,\u00a0hamsa\u00a0fae<\/a>\u00a0(who uses lowercase lettering in her name)\u00a0recalls a kind of collective thrill that came\u00a0with the arrival of a\u00a0\u201cParis by Night\u201d<\/a> DVD.\u00a0The Vietnamese musical variety show began production and filming in the 1980s and\u00a0became a popular and beloved expression of, and connection to, Vietnamese art and culture that had a\u00a0particular resonance\u00a0with\u00a0fae.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like my life and my work as an artist is informed by my life as a transwoman, as a Vietnamese first-generation American growing up in Los Angeles. In the home, the first memory of art was through \u2018Paris by Night.\u2019 This was such a huge phenomenon in the 2000s, how we would have these DVDs that would come out and we would sit down for these two hours and watch these concerts, and the icons that birthed from this really created a core memory of the way performance and ritual is offered,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the diaspora, especially the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) diaspora, there\u2019s the \u2018model minority\u2019 myth, the pressure to be the doctor, the pharmacist, the engineer; never the artist, never the person working with aesthetics or visual culture or media. Somehow, ironically, we had \u2018Paris by Night\u2019 growing up. Why can\u2019t we be included in that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside\u00a0fae\u2019s\u00a0work as an artist,\u00a0is\u00a0cultivating that inclusion, which is seen in her work as director of\u00a0Viet Voices\u2019 AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship<\/a>, and as curator of the fellowship\u2019s upcoming exhibition,\u00a0\u201cPROPHECY: Joy\u00a0Futurism In A World Renewing,\u201d<\/a> Dec. 13 to 19 at The Front in San Ysidro (with\u00a0fae\u00a0giving a curator\u2019s talk at 4 p.m. Dec. 19). This exhibition features\u00a0the work of the artists who are part of the 2025 fall\/winter cycle\u2014Sebastian Loo, Rino Kodama, Jon Chen, and Jenn Ban.<\/p>\n

Fae, who is 32 and lives in Chula Vista with her partner, Victor Trasvina, is a contemporary artist working in expanded performance, technology, and social engagement. Before becoming a full-time artist, she worked in researching land animism, ethno-traditional studies, herbal medicine, ethnobotany, and other traditions from her family\u2019s lineage of farming, land stewardship, mysticism, and herbalism. She took some time to talk about joy, imagining the future, and cultivating that in community with others.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0Tell us about the AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship.<\/p>\n

A: For the past three years, I\u2019ve been working with Viet Voices (a local nonprofit). They work in so many different arms of organizing\u2014voting, housing rights, environmental justice, LGBTQIA justice, and now art and culture. They\u2019ve been producing shows for the last three years, and we\u2019ve noticed that these exhibitions and one-night performance festivals really mobilize so much change; a place where we share food, we share memory, we preserve our cultural history. This year, we were awarded a Healing Through the Arts and Nature grant from the Prebys Foundation<\/a>. Through this grant, I wondered, \u2018Well, what if we had a container to nourish artists twice a year?\u2019 meaning we would create a fellowship cycle for spring and summer and one for fall and winter, and each cycle would award four fellows to gather. I have this metaphor of \u201cwe gather by the river, we gossip, we talk about our lives.\u201d From that community, we can create an exhibition together. It\u2019s inspired from this sense of the isolated artists working inside a studio by ourselves, and then exhibiting our art on walls alongside other artists that we don\u2019t know. How do we dispel that? How do we queer, or recode, the contemporary art world through this closeness and intimacy that we create in the fellowship? This year, we have incubated eight artists, and we have also brought in eight professional artists from LA to New York to the Bay Area, to come in and facilitate workshops\u2014in sound art, grant writing, writing an artist statement, in movement and performance, in installation\u2014and using these workshops as a way to find multiplicity in the disciplines in which we work, and to experiment more and to not be perfect with the final product. Perhaps what we show is an activation that leads to something else. That is what\u2019s really exciting about this fellowship, it just offers so much permission to unmask and to find so much joy and belonging with each other.<\/p>\n

What I love about Chula Vista\u2026<\/p>\n

I live right now at the edge of\u00a0Jamul, in\u00a0Otay\u00a0Ranch.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0a suburban development, but I live next to eucalyptus groves and mountains and canyons, and I get to hear the coyotes laughing at night.\u00a0I get to see white owls flying when\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0on my night walk. I get to see hawks circling me during the day.\u00a0I feel like I get to live with the land, but also in\u00a0suburbia\u00a0at the same time.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0quiet\u00a0and\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0peaceful, and I can walk barefoot if I want.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0kind of\u00a0this\u00a0in\u00a0between\u00a0space of the back country and the city, and my art thrives when\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0in those liminal spaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0On the website, one of the benefits of the fellowship is described as \u201cqueering the boundaries and intersections of art\u2026\u201d What does this mean? Why was it important to make that part of this experience?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0That line is so special because it really is the mission of the fellowship to recognize artists who are working with an intersection in their identity, especially queer AAPI artists, immigrant artists, artists who have been displaced, artists who work beyond the realms of visual art culture. We wanted to focus on artists who are also organizers, who are also activists, who live a life beyond just creating, but perhaps they are healers, too. They\u2019re scuba divers, they\u2019re filmmakers. We want to invite those who create art from a different lens, and how do we clear an art space to include that lens because that lens comes from such a deep passion. We want to look beyond traditional formats of art, and that\u2019s why we are focusing so much on performance and new media and technology and ways of making with ceramics and painting and canvas. How do we queer the medium, too? Social engagement is a really huge part of that.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0Can you talk about how the focus of the \u201cPROPHECY\u201d exhibition came together? Why did you decide to focus on themes of joy, futurism, renewal?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0There was so much childhood wonder in our first meeting, and it created a root in this fellowship cycle. It\u2019s using the materials of clay, rice paper, a mother\u2019s breast, that this exhibition is really building a home together. It proposes the question of what happens after the healing journey, after the awakening or the remembrance? What comes to mind in this group is that they are all subconsciously creating some sort of dwelling or shelter to be together, and that shelter is the gallery space, but all the work inside of it is very personal. We have Jon Chen, who is drawing upon their y2k identity and Chinese mythology, and remything the turtle god spirit. We have Jenn Ban, who is attending this fellowship as a mother with their 9-month-old child, Juju, and Juju is a part of the art. Jenn will be premiering a film of the anatomy of the breast, breastfeeding, and how Juju is a performer in that work. We have Rino Kodama, who is creating these clay vessels inscribed with incantations, chants, from each fellow. Each fellow had a mantra to choose, and Rino inscribed these wishes, these intentions, into these vessels for people to engage with. Lastly, we have Sebastian Loo, who\u2019s working with Xuan rice paper and watercolor. Something that solidifies all of these themes is that they\u2019re all working with water, and my relationship and my desire to relate to San Diego and Kumeyaay land is because of our oceans. There\u2019s something about being in the ocean that reminds us that we are children again; there\u2019s a study that says the salinity content of the ocean is the same salinity content of the womb, and this poetry really inspires me. I really do trust that the works that are being exhibited, the multidisciplinary array of it, will envision what joy can be.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0In curating this exhibition, what kinds of conversations or interactions were you having with the artists? What were you looking for in terms of how the finished exhibition would look and feel?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0The question that I pitched to the artists, and continue to come back to, is \u2018What kind of art will you make when you are not censored? What kind of art will you make if you had permission to say. \u201cFree Palestine. Protect The Dolls. [Expletive] ICE.\u201d? What would you create? If there is no institutional boundary, or a curator telling you, \u201cYou can\u2019t do this, you can\u2019t do that,\u201d what would you make? If I said, \u201cCreate as big and as large and as erotic as you\u2019d like, what do you create?\u201d\u2019 That freedom is the same ethos in which I create from, and that\u2019s why the fellowship is called an artist-run collective because we want to propel and mobilize each other to create as absurd, as fun, as joyous as possible.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0Since you\u2019ve mentioned how you create, one of your works is \u201cGirl Voice,\u201d a live performance and sound installation from earlier this year. Can you describe this piece? And how did you develop this concept of exploring gender, colonialism, and identity through the idea of what a \u201cgirl voice\u201d sounds like?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0Let me drop a bell hooks quote where she says patriarchy has no gender. \u201cGirl Voice\u201d was a work birthed through my time experimenting with a loop machine, which is a sound looping machine, after 10 years of learning about my voice. Reclaiming my voice through grief, through sexuality, through sacred rage, I came to this conclusion that my voice is the most powerful technology. My voice can invoke, can channel voices before me, voices that have not been archived, and these specific voices that I speak of are voices of third gender people, specifically third gender shamans, ritualists, animus guides, leaders, bridges; and through colonial erasure, their existence is gone. Through \u201cGirl Voice,\u201d I thought, what if I can revive their voices through my own voice? This is an experimental, live sound performance where I use only my voice to loop sounds of land-meaning the vibrations of land, the vibrations of oceans, the vibrations of animals-as a form of biomimicry to create this chamber, to create a forest or an ocean inside of an art space. Using that as a foreground, I chant, I pray, use my voice to free myself, and perhaps during that time, the voices of the transcestors, or the ancestors, come out; it\u2019s a visceral response. The audience gets to be reenchanted by the rawness of the voice, one that is not programmed by gender. My voice doesn\u2019t have to be really high, my voice doesn\u2019t have to be really low, to be taken seriously. By the end of the performance, I invite audiences to a prompt: How\u2019s this for a girl voice? I invite them, I invite trans folks, I invite anyone who wants to come forward and reconcile with the programming they have inherited through their voice. This prompt, \u201chow\u2019s this for a girl voice?,\u201d is a revolt. It is telling White supremacy culture, it\u2019s telling everything that people have cursed our voice to be, how\u2019s this? How\u2019s this for the voice that I have now? When I looped that voice with everyone else\u2019s voice, we became one voice, one voice that cannot be categorized, and it was so powerful to hear the voices of my trans kin in unison and harmony; unbreakable. Perhaps those voices are the future ancestors, our future elders.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0What is the best advice you\u2019ve ever received?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0I have a teacher, Robin Christ. She teaches isha yoga in San Diego and she\u2019s been studying tantric yoga philosophy for the last 50 years. She\u2019s just an eccentric Pisces woman, and she reminds us about something called mudita. It\u2019s this concept of joy\u2014celebrating joy, but joy coming from celebrating someone else\u2019s success. That we can choose to be joyful because we support others for their health, for the act of creating, for their act of embodying themselves or remembering who they are. I think that one piece of advice, a mantra, that can take someone so far because I know it\u2019s taken me really far to choose my joy.<\/p>\n

Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0I wake up and either work out or go to yoga. After that, I\u2019m going to go to Wayfarer. It\u2019s a bakery in Bird Rock. You have to get a scone, a sandwich\u2014you actually just get everything. Get as many things as your wallet can buy, and feast. There is a secret beach in Bird Rock on Camino de la Costa, and during low tide you will feel like you are on vacation in Hawaii or Costa Rica. After you feast, you go for a little dip, maybe make out in the ocean with your partner. After that, I will go to my favorite grocery store in Del Mar, called Jimbo\u2019s. In that same plaza, after doing a great grocery haul, there is this boba shop called Omomo; get a get a nice little beverage from there. On the drive back to Chula Vista, I listen to R&B\u2014Blood Orange, SZA, 2000s R&B like Mario and Usher, and just ride that caffeine high \u2018til I\u2019m home. I don\u2019t know if I can say this, but I would take a CBD gummy and make dinner for my family, which is my partner and my partner\u2019s parents. I would say that is the ideal Saturday or Sunday. A very, very indulgent day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the early 2000s,\u00a0hamsa\u00a0fae\u00a0(who uses lowercase lettering in her name)\u00a0recalls a kind of collective thrill that came\u00a0with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1919,181,23,100,592,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-84066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-columns","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-people","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-headlines","15":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}