I make bodies of work themed around being a half Chinese lesbian in the American south. Being a multidisciplinary artist, material and its meaning is an important part of my work, varying from oil paintings of sex and the female body to mixed media sculptures which incorporate taxidermy and my own hair. I utilize research into Chinese mythology, history, and culture, combined with my experiences as a lesbian and my mental health struggles to make pieces that respond to the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of people like me in both mainstream media and society as a whole.I often incorporate aspects which alter the work as it is viewed, such as strings to pull, pieces to remove, hidden images, or a way to change the light or colors on work to activate the piece, as I feel most connected with something that is not immediately understood. Many of my works are self-portraits, some as a photograph or oil painting of myself, some containing my DNA, and some lacking any resemblance to my appearance at all. Art is the conduit in which I navigate through both the shared experiences and the selfish side of my own identity and carve out my place in the world.
Build a Self You Love
Performed at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens in front of the Royal Chinese Bamboo.
The boxes are stylized characters making up my name. 杨 is my last name, and where the Hanfu (traditional Chinese clothing) is stored and is the base on which the rest of the characters are stacked. 朱丽叶 is my first name, Juliette, sound translated by my grandmother, as I was never given a Chinese name. 朱 is the top box, and when translated literally means red or vermillion. 丽 translates to "beauty", and holds a mirror for me to look at myself in as a reminder. 叶 translates to leaf, and like each of the shelves above it, contains items which correlate to both the meaning of the word and object which hold significance to myself. This piece is about the struggle to form an identity in which I accept myself, trying to balance my culture while growing up mixed-race and in America.
Labels
Oil on Canvas
26 x 40"
2024
Society functions on labels, to categorize and catelog, to better understand, to better contain. Labels are applied incorrectly, slapped on and peeled off over and over. People learn to label themselves to become more digestible. They disect every aspect of their beings, tacking on opinions pinned on them by others, introducing themselves with an identiy entirely constucted by the society they live in.
The Bitch You Call Mutt
Photograph with Invisible Ink
Originally displayed with a porcelain plate stacked with Twinkies in front of it, a note read "Take One". Under the Twinkies, another note read "You are what you eat."
44” x 34”
2024
Mutt, Twinkie, Banana: the slurs that have been used against me for being half Chinese and half white. To emphasize how much of a mutt I am, I sit on a dog bed, muzzle and collar on to prevent me from fighting back, dressed in hanfu and jeans.
Drag Lin
Taxidermy stag head, snake shed, butterfly wings, gold foil, beads, wig, human hair
2024
The qilin is a mighty mythical chimerical beast in Chinese culture, known for its beautiful horns and golden scales. Qilin itself is a combination of qi, denoting male, and lin, denoting female, however the creature can also be referred to as just lin. As the male white-tailed deer is partially transformed, from living to dead to something resembling life once again, from American to Chinese, from male to female, it exists as all of the above, as both one and the other, and she does so with pride.
Flirting With Death
Intended to be viewed through blue or red movie glasses
Series of 16x20" anaglyphs
Digitally drawn anaglyphs printed on canvas
2025
Other and Both
Not every photo is displayed on my website, and I consider this as an unfinished or ongoing series.
This series is about being mixed race, the feeling of displacement and lack of belonging in the world and the struggle to force myself into fititng in. I wanted to create a feeling of being othered by being “both”, being more than just one thing. This work is meant to be unsettling but also beautiful, aesthetically pleasing horror, and intriguing monsters.There are four overlapping subcategories: Body/Mind, Human/Monster, Light/Dark, and Familiar/Fiend. Body/Mind focuses more on self-destructive behavior as a result of poor mental health, of trying to shove yourself into a narrative or rip yourself away from it. Human/Monster combines human and inhuman parts to further the idea of being different and an outcast in the world, someone visually not quite right. Light/Dark uses bright lights and shadows cast by the objects it interacts with as a play on the idea that one cannot exist without the other. Familiar/Fiend creates creatures by combining animals together to make strange new creatures which are up to the interpretation of how friendly or fiendish they would be. There are at least two sides to every story, and viewing both sides together is the best way to see the beauty within the darkness.Images:
Body/Mind: Burning Blood, Eat Glass, Self Stitching, Let Me In, Under the Skin
Familiar/Fiend: Morpho, Corvid, Canine, Crawler, One-Jaw
Human/Monster: Tied Hand, Hunger, Feathers, Bite the Hand, Watcher
Light/Dark: Late Ritual, Hollow Glow, Looming Radiation, Betwixt the Bones, Teeth Around the World
Do You See Us Too?
Series of 3, Oil on Canvas
16 x 20”
2024
For this series, I drew inspiration from a small, short-lived group made up of queer women that lived in Shanghai, 磨镜党, meaning “polishing/rubbing mirrors”, a euphemism for scissoring. Rather than just be about sex, I also wanted to convey a sense of longing for a “forbidden” love, using wispy brush strokes and thin lines to create a more fanciful feel and highlight the paint as a medium used to construct the image much like the constructed realities the women are imagining in the mirrors.
Badger King
Blue Light