Olympian
Award: Wood Pencil
Wood Pencil / Photography / Personal Style / 2024
Hailing a new femininity with themes of athleticism and heroism, this abstract, fictional portrait of female wrestling serves as metaphor for the resilience of AAPI women in America. Conflating wrestling, pageantry and Asian identity, these women perform for the camera in a ring or on a pedestal, where they inherently become a spectacle. This series was created as a way to explore what it means to reclaim beauty standards imposed on Asian women by a white, post-colonialist society, where we often have to wear a mask or put on a show in order to find a sense of safety and belonging in America.
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