Ally is my memelord roommate. We met almost one year ago while studying abroad in Paris. Since then we’ve shared many candid photos, memes, and late nights writing papers, out in the city, and talking about race relations and queerness on our quintessential Brooklyn fire escape. Full of insight, vision, and an inspiring fearlessness, Ally talked to us about family, the essentialism of identity politics, and her art over dinner at a soba joint. -Amy

How would you describe yourself as a creative?

I feel like I am someone who has been making art for so long that it is very much intrinsic to my identity now. Within the vocabulary of artistic practice, I don’t think I have one word to use as an umbrella term for everything, because I do a lot of things. I photograph, I illustrate, I’ve done video art and performance art. There’s not really one word I would use.

How do you define your Asian identity? Or how do you perceive it?

Well, I’m Chinese-American. Actually, fun fact, I am an eighth Korean on my Mom’s side, so my great-grandma is Korean, I suppose. But that’s not something I knew until I was 17. I think my parents just brought it up one day. I was like, wow I feel like I’ve been living a lie my whole life. Which actually kind of explains why when I came to NYU, a lot of people, a lot of Koreans specifically, would come up to me and ask if I was Korean.

Did they not want to tell you?

It’s not that they didn’t want to tell me. My brother knew. I guess it’s something they assumed I knew, but it was news to me. So, imagine that. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter because it’s not something I identify with.

Can you talk more about your relationship with your Chinese heritage or what it means to you?

I have a difficult time figuring out how to describe it. “It” being my identity, because I guess I just haven’t thought about it in terms of specifying what it means to me. I was born in America, but I lived for three years after I was born in China. So Chinese was my first language. As fluent as I could be for a baby, though. When I came back to the States, I started to learn English and lost my fluency in Chinese. So there’s always been this difficult language barrier to deal with because I can understand a lot of Chinese perfectly, it’s just a matter of speaking it that doesn’t compute. So it’s difficult because I feel like in terms of communication, it’s one of those, it’s like a double mirror– you know what I mean? One of those double mirrors where you can see through one side but then the other side can’t see you? [Elaine: A double sided mirror?] Yeah, a double-sided mirror, in the sense that I can understand Chinese but it’s difficult for me to speak it.

Have you ever felt that your lack of fluency in the language has created a disconnect between you and your Chinese identity?

I think yes because I feel like Chinese identity is so tied to family. If I can’t communicate with so much of my family, then what do I have? You know what I mean? I sometimes have trouble reconciling being Chinese-American because of that language barrier. There’s a lot of feeling like I’m not Chinese enough. Because if you walk around NYU campus, you’ll just hear Chinese people speaking fluently with each other, and there’s just an aspect of, well, I don’t belong to that.

Do you feel like you belong to the American identity?

I mean, I would have to say yes, just because – what else is there for me to belong to? But at the same time, it’s not something that I want to have to embrace because of the current state of America. But yeah, I identify as a Chinese-American.

Does ethnic identity, or more specifically Chinese or Asian identity, manifest itself in your artwork?

I think it didn’t until lately. For our self-representation class, we were reading Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel, and in reading that, I started thinking, why don’t I make art about my family?

My mom was visiting earlier this semester, and she looked at all these photos that I had hung up, that I took Paris, and she looked at me – because she was with me abroad for a couple weeks towards the end of the semester – and she was like, “oh, where are the photos of me?” And I realised in that moment, I didn’t really take any pictures of my Mom. I mostly took pictures of my friends and the scenery. And I was thinking about that while we were reading Alison Bechdel and just asking myself, why don’t I have art about these people that are so intrinsic to my life? So this semester, throughout the classes that I’ve taken, I’ve started to explore my family and familial relations, which ultimately do end up being tied to Chinese heritage and culture. I think as I realised how important it is to my identity, I started to explore that more in art.

Do you identify as a person of colour and what does that mean for you in American/Western politics and society today?

As I am not white, I definitely identify as a person of colour. And what that means for me is I that I am, unfortunately, part of a group of people that is nationally marginalised. It’s difficult in unique ways for every group, but I think for Asian-Americans it’s difficult in the sense that we have so much to live up to in the minds of white Americans because of the model minority myth. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the model minority myth is also a tool for anti-blackness and anti-black racism. [Elaine: Yeah, that’s how it originated.] Yeah. And thinking about how being a person of colour means that you are a part of a greater group of people who are ultimately completely disenfranchised by whiteness.

“I’ve started to explore my family and familial relations, which ultimately do end up being tied to Chinese heritage and culture.”

What do you think about the Asian model minority myth in terms of the race-relations narrative of just black and white, and how do you fit into that?

I think the race narrative of black and white in America is so prevalent because of America’s history of slavery. And because black Americans are one of the most brutalised groups in America. But it’s difficult because only talking about race relations in that sense completely erases all of the other non-white groups. I think our disenfranchisement has a lot to do with the model minority myth in that that narrative is dehumanising because it sets up expectations that are extremely unrealistic, and basically positions Asian-Americans as academic robots. It’s a dehumanisation that expects too much. And that expectation of too much only sets up expectations for other marginalised groups. So it’s difficult because the oppression of marginalised groups is so connected, but that gets erased in the typical narrative of black and white.

Going back to your art, you mentioned only recently you’ve been starting to make art about your family. Is there any specific message that you’re trying to portray, or some kind of greater goal with incorporating bodies that are close to you and that are Asian?

I haven’t worked towards an overall message. I think the things that I have worked on are very much ways for me to figure out my relationships to people and to my own identity. I mean, I guess a greater message can be interpreted from that, just because of how art is experienced. But I think for me personally, I have not tried to embed a greater moral or takeaway. That’s not why I make art. I very much make it for me. I guess, to be fair though, being a person whose identity intersects at a lot of different margins will inevitably draw out different kinds of messages. It’s just not something that I go in with the intention of doing.

Do you wanna speak more about your intersectional identity?

I identify as a queer woman of colour. I also – I mean, I don’t identify as this because it’s just how my life is, but I’m also mentally ill. Mental illness is something I’ve addressed a lot in art and for many years it’s been the driving force of making art. Once I started being able to cope better with mental illness, I started to look at the ways in which my identity has been shaped by that. But also, trying to navigate these other margins through that. Because being queer, for example, that’s something that I have not embraced as much as I do now. It’s something that I haven’t really figured out how I want to address in art. And maybe I just think that there is a lot of art already about queer identity, so I don’t want to make something to throw on top of the pile.

There’s this Walter Benjamin quote, it’s: “all great literature either creates a genre or dissolves it.” I think that can be applied to visual art as well. So I guess I’m just waiting for that idea that will create a genre or dissolve it.

What’s your opinion on the existing discourse in art of Asian queer people?

That’s a really good question. Maybe unintentionally there’s a part of me that’s separating those as a safety precaution. I guess I do that separation…I don’t know if I’m wording this right because I think the answer is just I haven’t thought about it a lot. So I guess I’ll have to reflect on it and come back to you.

Yeah, I mean it’s not like you have a responsibility to be the voice for this particular group.

And something that’s difficult to reconcile is how do I speak for myself without seeming like I’m speaking for so many others?

In class the other day, we read the Decolonialist Manifesto by Walter Mignolo, and what he says is basically that identify politics in the West and these questions around representation all fall into this hegemonic Western narrative of identity and politics. And what that manifesto showed me personally is that I need to be more critical of even things that seem the most critical. As in, being critical of identity politics in the West, in that it is very much a Western narrative. And because it’s such a Western narrative, there’s this issue of overall representation. I think in a sense you can definitely make the argument that identity politics is essentialising.

How do you reconcile being queer and being Asian?

That’s tricky. I mean, I guess I’m lucky that NYU, and Gallatin especially, is a place where worrying about that intersection isn’t something that I do a lot of. But when I go home, I’m not out to my parents. I guess I have to reconcile it in a place where I can’t be visible. And just put my comfort and safety over the benefits, I suppose, of being out to my parents. Or maybe not the benefits, but whatever would come from that.

“And as I started to build this skill set of design, my parents became more accepting of me doing art. Because they saw that I could turn that into something employable.”

How was your decision to pursue art received by your parents?

It wasn’t great at first. I came to NYU with this idea that I would somehow study science, but then be a writer, but then an artist, or not even artist, but just do other things that I like. I took this bio class in CAS. No shade to CAS but it was the worst thing I ever did. It was an awful class. I think the whole semester I went to maybe five or six classes. And I realised before the semester even started, I can’t do this. So I signed up for a photography class that same semester, and my parents were not pleased when I told them I wanted to drop out of biology. They told me a career in art is not going to be prosperous, because of that stereotype of the starving artist. So I sort of said ok, I’ll do the bio class, I’ll also do the photography class and see where I end up at the end of the semester.

I was having a conversation with my Mom at the end of the semester and she was like, “why don’t you try a graphic design class?” And that ended up being a great decision. I realised I really enjoy design, it’s a very practical application of art and artistic practice. Looking back, graphic design was always something I was interested in without actually having a word for it. And that made me realise that there is an inaccessibility, being an artist in Asian communities. I took drawing classes and piano lessons and all of that art stuff when I was young, but as soon as I wanted to turn it into a career, I couldn’t. There’s this wild hypocrisy where you can do all these things you like, but then you can’t actually pursue that.

So I stopped doing science. I started getting into conceptual art and conversations about aesthetic theory, and then started to do more with graphic design but also visual art. And as I started to build this skill set of design, my parents became more accepting of me doing art. Because they saw that I could turn that into something employable. I guess looking at it now, though, the most difficult thing about my academics is, how do I reconcile being a designer but then also wanting to be an artist who engages in these very intellectual conversations? Because I’ve had graphic design jobs before and it just doesn’t get into that at all. Like, ever. And understandably so, because, you know, they’re not the same fields, but …

Do you have any people that you look up to in art or design or any of the practices that you partake in? Any specific influences?

I’m someone who doesn’t pick favourite anythings, I don’t have a favourite movie, I don’t have a favourite TV show. I think that people are very much shaped by their experiences, but experiences are interactions with other people, with places and objects. So if anything, I am very much influenced by people that I interact with daily. With friends, family, etc.

Do you feel like you fit into an Asian community?

I wouldn’t really say I belong to a community that has a specific amount of numbers or anything, I think I guess if you think about community as a greater population of Asian people, then yeah.

What about when you were younger?

Definitely when I was younger, but they were kind of communities that I was in because I was doing art classes, and they were taught by my piano teacher’s nephew, or whatever. It’s like this whole thing of Asian people who know each other who are taking art lessons with this one guy. [Elaine: I had that too (laughs).] Ally: Yeah, right? And then I became friends with his children and they were my friends growing up. And so we would all take art classes with other Asian kids. We all had piano lessons too. It was awful – the piano lessons. If you were wondering. I wouldn’t necessarily call that a community, though, just because it seemed like family friends. I never really thought about it as, We Are a Community of Asian People, it was just like, yeah, hanging out with family friends.

Do you feel a need for an Asian community right now in your life?

I’m not sure I would say I need one but I’d really like one.

I definitely see community… like the Gallatin community. Like a club. People who come together for a reason. Amy: Like for a central purpose? Ally: Either with a central purpose or some connecting factor.

Can you talk about your photography?

I started taking photos in eighth grade [with] a dinky little point-and-shoot that my parents had lying around. I started carrying that with me everywhere. In retrospect, obviously they were kinda shitty. Or kinda shitty by today’s standards. But I was having a good time and realising that I really liked taking photos. Because prior to that I had mostly been drawing and illustrating. When I was a senior in high school I took a photography class, and then started to get more serious about it. And then, in my freshman year of college, I was taking that photography class and I decided that in the year of 2014 I would start doing this 365 challenge. Basically take a photo every single day and then upload it to wherever. So I started to do that and I got 200-some days into it and realised I have no time for this, I [was then] a sophomore, and because I had worked on my craft so much, the standard that I had for myself was a lot higher than it was when I started. If I wanted to keep improving, I realised it really didn’t matter about quantity. It mattered how much work I put into it.

That’s been something that I’ve been practicing for quite a while now. Actually, almost eight years. That’s a long-ass time. But when we went abroad, that’s when I started taking film photos. I started shooting on a 35mm film camera. And that became the go-to. I think I became a lot better at composition since then because with film you don’t wanna waste a shot, so you really have to think about the lighting, and composition, and every single factor. And that makes you such a better photographer. It’s difficult to go back to digital now.

How would you describe your style of photography?

I don’t know, I am not good at describing my own style. For digital, probably high-contrast. I definitely am more interested in portraiture than anything else. But I went through a phase, sort of my emo photography phase, where I was taking a lot of really dark photo manipulation pieces in the summer of 2014. And I think I still definitely take away parts of that aesthetic today. But I just don’t really practice that (laughs) emo photography as much.

And the other kinds of art you do?

I started mostly pencil drawing, and then onto paste, l charcoal or whatever, when I was in fourth grade, I think. 2004. So I have been [drawing] for a little over a decade, which is over half my life. So definitely something I’ve been doing for a long time. I guess I became more serious about it in October of my junior year, 2014, because I started doing inktober, which is basically where you draw something every day and post it online. I actually did follow through with this one. It made me a lot more comfortable with illustrating and a lot more interested in doing it.

View more of Ally’s work, including graphic design, photography and video, and illustration at allyzhao.com.

Interview by Amy Ni and Elaine Lo