In the early 2000s, hamsa fae (who uses lowercase lettering in her name) recalls a kind of collective thrill that came with the arrival of a “Paris by Night” DVD. The Vietnamese musical variety show began production and filming in the 1980s and became a popular and beloved expression of, and connection to, Vietnamese art and culture that had a particular resonance with fae.

“I feel like my life and my work as an artist is informed by my life as a transwoman, as a Vietnamese first-generation American growing up in Los Angeles. In the home, the first memory of art was through ‘Paris by Night.’ This was such a huge phenomenon in the 2000s, how we would have these DVDs that would come out and we would sit down for these two hours and watch these concerts, and the icons that birthed from this really created a core memory of the way performance and ritual is offered,” she says. “In the diaspora, especially the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) diaspora, there’s the ‘model minority’ myth, the pressure to be the doctor, the pharmacist, the engineer; never the artist, never the person working with aesthetics or visual culture or media. Somehow, ironically, we had ‘Paris by Night’ growing up. Why can’t we be included in that?”

Alongside fae’s work as an artist, is cultivating that inclusion, which is seen in her work as director of Viet Voices’ AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship, and as curator of the fellowship’s upcoming exhibition, “PROPHECY: Joy Futurism In A World Renewing,” Dec. 13 to 19 at The Front in San Ysidro (with fae giving a curator’s talk at 4 p.m. Dec. 19). This exhibition features the work of the artists who are part of the 2025 fall/winter cycle—Sebastian Loo, Rino Kodama, Jon Chen, and Jenn Ban.

Fae, who is 32 and lives in Chula Vista with her partner, Victor Trasvina, is a contemporary artist working in expanded performance, technology, and social engagement. Before becoming a full-time artist, she worked in researching land animism, ethno-traditional studies, herbal medicine, ethnobotany, and other traditions from her family’s lineage of farming, land stewardship, mysticism, and herbalism. She took some time to talk about joy, imagining the future, and cultivating that in community with others.

Q: Tell us about the AAPI Emerging Artist Fellowship.

A: For the past three years, I’ve been working with Viet Voices (a local nonprofit). They work in so many different arms of organizing—voting, housing rights, environmental justice, LGBTQIA justice, and now art and culture. They’ve been producing shows for the last three years, and we’ve noticed that these exhibitions and one-night performance festivals really mobilize so much change; a place where we share food, we share memory, we preserve our cultural history. This year, we were awarded a Healing Through the Arts and Nature grant from the Prebys Foundation. Through this grant, I wondered, ‘Well, what if we had a container to nourish artists twice a year?’ meaning we would create a fellowship cycle for spring and summer and one for fall and winter, and each cycle would award four fellows to gather. I have this metaphor of “we gather by the river, we gossip, we talk about our lives.” From that community, we can create an exhibition together. It’s inspired from this sense of the isolated artists working inside a studio by ourselves, and then exhibiting our art on walls alongside other artists that we don’t know. How do we dispel that? How do we queer, or recode, the contemporary art world through this closeness and intimacy that we create in the fellowship? This year, we have incubated eight artists, and we have also brought in eight professional artists from LA to New York to the Bay Area, to come in and facilitate workshops—in sound art, grant writing, writing an artist statement, in movement and performance, in installation—and using these workshops as a way to find multiplicity in the disciplines in which we work, and to experiment more and to not be perfect with the final product. Perhaps what we show is an activation that leads to something else. That is what’s really exciting about this fellowship, it just offers so much permission to unmask and to find so much joy and belonging with each other.

What I love about Chula Vista…

I live right now at the edge of Jamul, in Otay Ranch. It’s a suburban development, but I live next to eucalyptus groves and mountains and canyons, and I get to hear the coyotes laughing at night. I get to see white owls flying when I’m on my night walk. I get to see hawks circling me during the day. I feel like I get to live with the land, but also in suburbia at the same time. It’s quiet and it’s peaceful, and I can walk barefoot if I want. It’s kind of this in between space of the back country and the city, and my art thrives when I’m in those liminal spaces.

Q: On the website, one of the benefits of the fellowship is described as “queering the boundaries and intersections of art…” What does this mean? Why was it important to make that part of this experience?

A: That line is so special because it really is the mission of the fellowship to recognize artists who are working with an intersection in their identity, especially queer AAPI artists, immigrant artists, artists who have been displaced, artists who work beyond the realms of visual art culture. We wanted to focus on artists who are also organizers, who are also activists, who live a life beyond just creating, but perhaps they are healers, too. They’re scuba divers, they’re filmmakers. We want to invite those who create art from a different lens, and how do we clear an art space to include that lens because that lens comes from such a deep passion. We want to look beyond traditional formats of art, and that’s why we are focusing so much on performance and new media and technology and ways of making with ceramics and painting and canvas. How do we queer the medium, too? Social engagement is a really huge part of that.

Q: Can you talk about how the focus of the “PROPHECY” exhibition came together? Why did you decide to focus on themes of joy, futurism, renewal?

A: There was so much childhood wonder in our first meeting, and it created a root in this fellowship cycle. It’s using the materials of clay, rice paper, a mother’s breast, that this exhibition is really building a home together. It proposes the question of what happens after the healing journey, after the awakening or the remembrance? What comes to mind in this group is that they are all subconsciously creating some sort of dwelling or shelter to be together, and that shelter is the gallery space, but all the work inside of it is very personal. We have Jon Chen, who is drawing upon their y2k identity and Chinese mythology, and remything the turtle god spirit. We have Jenn Ban, who is attending this fellowship as a mother with their 9-month-old child, Juju, and Juju is a part of the art. Jenn will be premiering a film of the anatomy of the breast, breastfeeding, and how Juju is a performer in that work. We have Rino Kodama, who is creating these clay vessels inscribed with incantations, chants, from each fellow. Each fellow had a mantra to choose, and Rino inscribed these wishes, these intentions, into these vessels for people to engage with. Lastly, we have Sebastian Loo, who’s working with Xuan rice paper and watercolor. Something that solidifies all of these themes is that they’re all working with water, and my relationship and my desire to relate to San Diego and Kumeyaay land is because of our oceans. There’s something about being in the ocean that reminds us that we are children again; there’s a study that says the salinity content of the ocean is the same salinity content of the womb, and this poetry really inspires me. I really do trust that the works that are being exhibited, the multidisciplinary array of it, will envision what joy can be.

Q: In curating this exhibition, what kinds of conversations or interactions were you having with the artists? What were you looking for in terms of how the finished exhibition would look and feel?

A: The question that I pitched to the artists, and continue to come back to, is ‘What kind of art will you make when you are not censored? What kind of art will you make if you had permission to say. “Free Palestine. Protect The Dolls. [Expletive] ICE.”? What would you create? If there is no institutional boundary, or a curator telling you, “You can’t do this, you can’t do that,” what would you make? If I said, “Create as big and as large and as erotic as you’d like, what do you create?”’ That freedom is the same ethos in which I create from, and that’s why the fellowship is called an artist-run collective because we want to propel and mobilize each other to create as absurd, as fun, as joyous as possible.

Q: Since you’ve mentioned how you create, one of your works is “Girl Voice,” a live performance and sound installation from earlier this year. Can you describe this piece? And how did you develop this concept of exploring gender, colonialism, and identity through the idea of what a “girl voice” sounds like?

A: Let me drop a bell hooks quote where she sa...

San Diego Union-Tribune

Message History

Add new keyword

Delivery option(s)