"With the recent tumultuous- to say the least- events at UCLA this past quarter, I’ve felt horrified, disgusted, alone, unsupported, furious, useless… the list goes on. During this time, I relied unconditionally on the support and bravery from other UCLA students to find the motivation to wake up every single day. Yet, regardless of the mental trauma my peers and I underwent, we refused to be silenced by the oppressive systems that attacked, shot at, and arrested us. Every single individual in this exhibition has pushed themselves tirelessly as our world fell apart around us. While I, like many others, couldn’t fathom continuing on as usual, we knew that we still had to persevere- to speak up and fight back.
? was originally a piece commenting on colorism in Chinese culture. ? is still a piece that symbolizes my struggle with my skin color and cultural heritage. When I was younger, I would go back to China to visit family, where my other cousins would call me their “Black cousin” because of how tan my skin was. Prior to returning to China, I had never thought twice about the shade of my skin, or if there was any ulterior meaning behind it. All of a sudden I was being ridiculed for something considered so normal in California. All of a sudden I was self conscious about the way I looked, and the way others looked down at me. I didn’t learn about the connotations behind having darker skin in Chinese culture until I was much older.
To this day, I often get comments about the shade of my skin. Random strangers come up to me and ask me “what I am” because the shade of my skin confuses their preconceived notions of what I’m “supposed to look like” as a Chinese American. I’ve had to defend my cultural heritage while being pulled back and forth between two cultures, constantly being stuck in the middle of the existing Asian American diaspora- which only becomes magnified by colorist and classist notions within Chinese culture."
