Exploring Identity and Liminality: A Conversation with Yongqi Tang

Camara Porter: It’s great to have you here today. I’m very thankful that we’re having this conversation; as we spoke about your works, we have uncovered different layers that you have specified have to deal with identity and more. I would like for our viewers to get an understanding of who you are. Would you mind telling us a bit about yourself?

Yongqi Tang: Yes, yes, of course, and first, I would like you to take a moment to express my gratitude. I’m very thankful that you can have me here.

I am Yongqi Tang, and my pronouns are she/her. I graduated last year from the University of Washington Painting & Drawing Program, MFA, and right now, I’m working as a full-time artist in Seattle. I was born in Shenzhen, China, it’s a southern city of China, and I moved here for college in 2015.

I’ve been here for about eight years. My work essentially is dealing with the liminality of living between my hometown China and living where I’m currently located, the United States, and dealing with the feeling of being in the middle and not really able to assimilate into either culture.

Camara: Working and studying both in China and America, how does this influence the way you approach the social construction of identities within your artwork?

Yongqi: In China, we would not say racist. It’s not like in America there are different races of people.

So in China, people look kind of similar, but they have very distinct cultures; the dominant culture is Han people like me. So East Asian faces, I would say living in China I feel like white people in America, so I’m the dominant race or dominant people and in shows and magazines.

The culture is dominant by us, the faces look like me when I’m watching TV or movie in China but when I moved here, none of the faces in the movies looked like me; they’re all white people. So I didn’t really realize how privileged I was until I moved here.

Until I became more marginal people, I realized that I actually have the privilege. I’m the more dominant one back in China. So I think that really impacts my way of looking at identity because I never had to consider identity when I was in China when I was mainstream.

I didn’t have to consider identity. I didn’t have to think about it until I became the marginal.

Camara: It must have been a very big culture shift to go through also throughout the time of coming to America and studying and while studying within American culture, noticing that your culture isn’t very much represented here the same way that it would have been when at home.

Camara: So, the concept of liminality and how you express it within your works, can you walk us through what a figure in your work may actually look and how you express the reality.

Yongqi: I have different approaches in my different projects. I am the kind of artist that would get bored by one way of thinking. I have different projects like the Eat Drink Man Woman that was shown in T293 in Rome.

Yongqi: That series of work is more representational and I work mostly from photographs. I asked my friends and family to pose for me. Making those works more tangible in reality since they are the real people that living in reality like the models are real. I was thinking about what their roles could be in my painting depending on what they really are.

For example, one of my paintings depicts a scene from my hometown it’s my memory. It is not real, but I am using a model in my family and asking my dad, mom, and auntie to pose for me. I would not randomly find an Asian dad or mom that the other people to pose for me. I would ask my dad and my mom.

Yongqi: I definitely would think about this. For the other painting, Eat Drink Man Woman: The Apartment. Depicts how I feel don’t really comfortable being here and not be able to be accepted by the culture here.

Yongqi: I asked my American friends to pose for me. A lot of them are white. In that painting, I am in the center, and on the right, there is another person that is my friend. She is also an international student from China, and she has a similar experience as me. So we are the only two people that are not fully enjoying the dinner in the painting. That is more specific; I am approaching liminality in this series of work in real life, but in this series of work, I am just starting right now. So I wish that painting would also be shown in Miami Beach for my solo show.

Camara: Congratulations.

Yongqi: Thank you; That is called Strange Tales: The Painted Wall. So starting from that one, I am thinking about not using photos at all before I am using only photos. In that painting, I am not using photos at all. I am thinking about how I could be more specific also culturally. So I am looking for references from both Western and East Asian history of painting or art history. I am looking for references there so it could still have the connotation of liminality, but it is not very literal. I don’t know. Maybe it is more literal. So it is from literature or art history. But it is not real life. It is from tradition.

Camara: So my understanding is that previously you were working very much in the sense of personal experience and grasping that understanding, so having people such as your grandparents or your parents inside of these artworks and being the references through photography. Now you are approaching it through a more literal sense of using references throughout history and culturally connecting the two since you are studying in America and then also have deep cultural roots in eastern Asia.

Yongqi: Yeah exactly.

Camara: So do you find this cultural balance easy to show the viewers?

Yongqi: Not really.

Yongqi: I don’t know if this is right, but when I show my work to other people, I don’t want them to be like, ” oh, this is by an Asian woman. Immediately I want to look at the painting first and be like oh this is a great painting and then they watch and look more into it.

Yongqi: I accept my education in the West. So the way I paint and organize conceptually is mostly Western. So I think maybe when people look at my painting they don’t immediately think this is from China. And I want people to think so. I don’t want my identity to be the first people to see. I want it to be more hidden in my work.

For example, I hide those fine figures in the strange house the painted wall, which would be in the Miami show. So those fine figures are from actually referencing the Dunhuang brothels in China. So it’s in the Northwestern part of China, it’s like brussels and they’re thousands and thousands years old.

It is not obvious because I put them in the context of a one point perspective, which is Western. But if People know a lot about the Asian art history. I think they will recognize that. So I want people to look into it first and recognize something from my cultural roots.

Camara: Do you ever find any issues or challenges that you may come about when creating an artwork subverts the narrative around your identity and representation?

Yongqi: Probably Research So the one project I’m working at right now are the strange tales. I just finished that painted wall, so I’m drawing from literature. There’s a compilation of Ghost Stories back in 1700s China, there are 150 Ghost Stories in that book and I think it’s very difficult for me to think about how I should paint ghost stories . Meanwhile, have them be contemporary because there’s 1700s and there are a lot of issues regarding the text. I chose to paint that book because it is so interesting. Sometimes the depiction of the female speakers for example is very problematic

There is a lot of rape in that book, and they don’t think it’s problematic because it’s very ancient. So I think maybe I should point out that something is wrong with that.

There are also many restrictions, limitations, or expectations of the female identity. Women should be, I’ll say, submissive, very submissive, and you should be low, and very weak so you can make someone, and you should just sacrifice everything you have for men, your husband, and your son.

So that is one big reason why female ghosts are so scary in Asian culture.

One of the scariest figures is the female ghosts, and they usually come back for revenge. I think that is partially because when they are alive they are so suppressed and they are like represent the marginal of the patriarchy system in China. So they could only get revenge when they die.

I think that is because men are very guilty. They feel very guilty. They hurt them so much, and they are scared of revenge. So they create female ghosts in that literature. So I think instead of making the female ghosts scary, I need to rethink their role. Like Madusa, the first glory is reinterpreted in Western society. So Madusa was very evil and scary for years. So I think maybe I could reinterpret female ghosts in Chinese culture too.