| GAF 2022 | Student Leadership Team | Artists | Events | Installation Views |
Looking for Something Maybe Myself
STATEMENT:
I don’t think I was satisfied with the way I looked for a long time. Growing up I was usually the only East Asian around, and I never saw any others in the movies or books I read. I remember always dreading photo day. I’m always self-critical when it comes to seeing my own picture but I think I also, in my brain, never matched up with the images in any of the media I consumed. But I never recognized any of this as a kid, so I just felt uncomfortable with my own image. When I first read Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, it inspired me to re-examine my past feelings of self-hatred and where they came from. I remember crying when I first read the excerpt that I used. I never had the words to illustrate how I felt until that moment. And so this photo series is a self-reflective project for my younger self. The raw, unfiltered thoughts and vulnerable photos are meant to be recognized. I don’t want to be invisible.
ARTIST BIO:
Benjamin Hsu (He/Him) is a Taiwanese-American sophomore from Oakland, CA. He is an artist that works in multiple different forms, including digital art and photography. His concentration is focused on Asians in America, how their identity intersects with Western culture, and how that is portrayed through visual media. His work is intended to evoke feelings of vulnerability and struggle while also commenting on societal constructs of racial identity and sexuality; this all happens alongside an exploration of his own identity as a person of color in the United States as he recontextualizes what has been taught to him since birth.
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