Day 525: February 02, 2020

I’m in my last semester of graduate school and reflecting on how I got here, I remember that I entered the MFA program through the drawing and painting area. Today however, I am currently not actively making drawings in the Western traditional sense. Along the way, I fell out of love with the medium and the training. For the past two years, I have been feeling guilty for not doing more drawings and paintings. The mediums that once fueled my education created a conflict in me.

Drawings and paintings are objects that come with a particular environment, treatment, viewing and displaying culture. They are usually seen in white cubes, on walls, pedestals, flat surfaces, and they are typically in spaces that provide enough visibility for the texture of color and gestures.

At one time, seeing my images and ideas stretched on a wood frame looked violent because they were often displayed in spaces where no one from the Hmong community visited. What does it mean when the majority of one's education is focused on Hmong culture and history and the people who support the most are educated white people? Are these situations foreshadowing my future in the fine arts?

I had a difficult time showing art in the local AAPI community because the majority of opportunities and exhibitions focused on themes that had little intersections with my work or the curation of the shows lacked critical engagement. Having attended a variety of AAPI exhibitions, I see that the lack of critique on the platforms and institutions that provide for people of color and underrepresented communities encouraged the white gaze and the culture of white validation. Why is it that people learn the most through other people’s pain? It was visible that those who benefited the most were often not people of color. Aside from the kinds of art opportunities that currently exist in the local art scene, I usually have a difference in opinion when showing art among artists who make a living on commissioned work. I respect people who are able to make a living by selling art, however, I personally have a hard time making art if and when my life depends on art to put food on the table.

I don’t want to use my artistic practice as a means of survival because I am reminded that this gesture of arts for survival is not a new practice within my family, the Hmong community and the diaspora. I am reminded that Hmong people have been in various situations where the legacy of displacement from forced migration leaves little opportunity to develop a connection to land, to live fully and develop their ideas and imagination. If Hmong people were not forced to migrate from their home, forced to live in secluded mountainous areas, forced to make life or death decisions to fight as allies of other nation-states, forced to become an enemy to one's own kind, I wonder what were their dreams and aspirations? How to break the cycle of doing for a means to survive? Do we get to live?

My Xibfwb from a Hmong literacy class stated one day that it is not a coincidence that we have Chinese last names. Xibfwb speculates that rape as ethnic cleansing was a tactic utilized for several years to erase Hmong/Miao ancestry. Geography and history are in my blood, in my name, the Hmong language, and in the clothing that I wear. I believe that my ancestors' resilience contributes to my existence.

Revisiting self-portraits I can recognize now that finding excitement in different mediums is a sign that perhaps there's been growth in my personal and professional life. I am less obsessed with drawing in the Western traditional sense. Through a studio art education, I have learned to find and make meaning in the methods involved with making art. The consistent practice of observation and reflection taught me that it was as much about 'seeing' as it was about documenting, achieving the feelings involved with that experience, and holding space for conversations to happen.

I am not always melancholic, I feel joy and I don't think that my people's history is holding me back from having "fun" in grad school, but it's hard to see my people's history as separate from who I am and as separate from a self-portrait. What I mean is, I don’t need pity, I need people to start thinking, and to start imagining with me.