June 2023
participatory performance painting at Something Creative Co’s Bi Bi Baby event
Many Boxes
In this performance, Many Boxes, viewers were encouraged to engage by choosing a colour and painting the artist’s skin. By doing so, the artist was personifying the experiencing of being labeled and how they are often forced to choose a single box that is not fully representative of their identity. Through engagement, the artist is challenging the viewer to consider how they have been labeled and how they may have labeled others.
When you exist in so many boxes, it is difficult to find people that can understand the nuances of your experience and thus you may have a complex relationship with others and with where you belong. Through this piece, the artist creates conversation around duality and intersectionality in the multiracial experience to examine how it affects our sense of belonging.
During the peak of their performance, Many Boxes, the artist took up space and personified how they are reclaiming their full identity by allowing themself to exist in many boxes. By mixing the paint on their body and the floor, the artist shows how the labels placed upon them were not fully representative of who they are, and how they are instead of mix of them. The performance highlights that reclamation is complex and inconsistent.
The peak of the artist’s performance was exhibited at 11:45pm on June 17th, 2023 at Something Creative Co’s immersive art event Bi Bi Baby. Watch the peak of their performance in the reels section of their Instagram, here.
The artist’s thoughts following the performance:
Many Boxes felt powerful and healing. Many people know me as the person that paints eggs; many don’t know that I paint eggs as inspiration from my childhood as a biracial person. Growing up I was called white-washed, wasian, and give names like “halfie” and “egg” because people felt that I was “yellow” on the inside and less “Asian” that other Asian kids. Until recently, I predominantly accepted my place in the white box that people put me into, because it was simpler, and it helped me avoid racist profiling and bullying. After years of allowing people’s perception to dictate the person I was, I had enough. As I began to examine my identity, I realized that not only am I fully Asian and fully white, but I am also an immigrant and never truly felt Canadian.
I began to take up space. I have stopped settling for simple descriptions of my identity. I have no interest in being easily categorized; I only care to be authentic. The world as I’ve learned it, is built for simple people. People with shorter names, one race, one gender, one home; these people are more easily categorized and promoted. And yet I can’t just check one box. I check many of them.
Many Boxes was a personification of this experience: a life of being labeled, and a peak of reclamation where I began taking up space in all the boxes I belong to. Remembering that no matter what I am labeled, it does not change who I am, or the intersectionality of my experience. Recognizing, that I am never only one, but I am all simultaneously.
I am Cantonese Canadian American, with German and Irish routes. I am from the colonizers and the colonized. I am gender fluid and gender queer, yet often use the term non-binary. I am pansexual and proud of who I love and who I am. My home is Hong Kong, but I don’t know it very well. My home is Vancouver, yet it doesn’t suit me. My home is Toronto and that is where I feel safe and real. I am fully all, at all times.