Chinese-American
This on-going portrait series is aimed toward portraying us in a way that is both honest and true. As a first generation Chinese-American myself, I can not help but notice how often we are cast into stereotypical roles of gangsters, martial artists or the emasculated computer nerd. It was not until I was reaching adulthood that I realized how the lack of an honest portrayal of Chinese-Americans on the big screen affects not only how I am perceived and treated by others in broader society, but also how I perceive myself. Because popular media insists that we act out preconceived stereotypes, we become the object of criticisms and assumptions that are not particularly true, but seem to grow more so with every mention. We lack images of who we really are, and, more importantly, we lack images of who we can aspire to become.
This is my attempt to fight back against the media's tradition of portraying us in such a limited range of cliche caricatures and, at the very least, to show the public what we are not.