“Drawing My Brown In A Sea of White” is based on the article “Han Ong Writes Himself” from OUT/LOOK, Issue 17. Lately, I’ve been creating a lot of self portraits where I touch on subjects about my immigration status, queerness and brown body. As I read thru this playwright interview, it resonated with me in how as artists of color we must keep on telling our own narratives because nobody is going to do it for us. Watching shows like “Will & Grace,” “Queer As Folks” and Ellen DeGeneres on the cover of Time Magazine as a teenage queer of color, I was thankful to be able to see how queer stories were being told in main stream media. Yet part of me, the part that did not fit with the gay white narrative, felt like something was missing. Sometimes these queer shows treated race like a joke or maybe they would give us a sexualized queer character of color that was written by a white person. While these shows were sometimes helpful in how I navigated queer spaces, I resorted to art and political posters to take ownership of my own story. This image is a reflection of that experience.
2017, giclee print, 20” x 20”
