still in secondary school. In our own ways, we both carried this confusion about who we were and where we belonged. I struggled for years, standing in front of the mirror, feeling suspended in a grey area between so many communities. But in making this illustration, I felt so secure and knew that I was someone. I felt that I was safe in that zone and community that I had finally found. I felt the hug between the two figures is not just cuddling my partner, but cuddling the future community that I have met in the future or the past. 

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14H: The title includes #1, is this part of a larger collection that you would like to speak to?

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MD: I can actually show you: [figure 1]. Fig. 1

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I actually have two. This one [fig. 1] is more of a human figure crying; they’re having a moment together, a coupling situation. The idea was a saying. #1 is more encouraging, while [Fig. 1] is darker. #1 received the most compliments because people feel that it is more gay to them. I understand that there is limited space, and I know that the jury has taste and wants to contribute to the exhibition as a whole. To more people #1 is gay, while fig.1 is more confusing, though it was not the intention. Which is why I don’t include this piece while submitting my work to magazines. I understand that, though, we need curators to do the work. That was not my intention, though, haha.

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​14H:Were there any other colors that you experimented with before deciding on purple? As the creator of this work, what does purple mean to you? 

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MD: I have to admit that I had a purple, um, era. A purple time? A purple-ish time. I have to admit that, and I don’t think there's anything wrong with being influenced by typical queer colors. But I am more of a digital illustrator, so sometimes I can be terrible when I work with actual media. I think I was trying to work with a color that makes me feel safe. So I automatically chose that one, and I did some experiments on my screen. I think I’m really into color contrast, so I tried different colors. I tried orange; to me, it is a really inspiring and encouraging color, and so is yellow. I still felt like the purple color at that moment was the most secure color to me. And that’s why I decided to stick with that.

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14H: Do you have any artists who inspire your own work?

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MD: I have to name a really old name: Käthe Kollwitz. She was born 100 years ago in Prussia. Kollwitz was the first woman not only to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts but also to receive honorary professor status. She was undeniably among the first women to break into those institutional spaces. Her work felt ‘right’ to me. Of course, if you look back at history, no one is a perfect figure, and I know some people might question why I name a white artist from a hundred years ago as an influence. But her work had a depth and compassion that shaped me. However, she was the most influential artist to me, not only because she was one of the few women artists recognized in major institutions at that time, but also because she was among the first to center the lives of the working class in her illustrations and prints She mainly focused on living in poverty; I know she had limitations of her time, but she was really an artist who made things with love. Her art is illustration and woodcuts. They are sad, you will see mothers holding dead sons, but it is so powerful. 

 

Anicka Yi, who was born in Seoul, South Korea, and lives and works in NYC, is a Korean American artist, works on breaking the boundaries of biology and technology. In reading Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, I realized many people interpret it simply as a surface-level blurring of body and machine, but Haraway’s intent is to challenge deeply entrenched dualisms and identity categories. I’ve been reading Anne Anlin Cheng’s work on ‘ornamentalism.’ She argues that Western culture often imagines Asian women not as subjects but as decorative surfaces: silk, porcelain, ornament, while Black women’s bodies are racialized through the history of flesh and enslavement. She’s not separating the two experiences but showing how they’re connected through different forms of racialization. This misunderstanding of Harroway’s cyborg manifesto is worsening the situation. We have Ghost in a Shell, Cyberpunk- why is it always a city that looks like Tokyo, Shanghai, or Hong Kong? The character doesn't have to be asian, but the styles of these robots look Asian. They are fetishized to the white male gaze. I have been trying to understand Afro and South Asian Futurism, and I’ve realized that using a single, unified term across different geopolitical contexts can be dangerous. I am still questioning whether terms like ‘East Asian futurism’ or ‘Asian futurism’ are even appropriate, given the very different histories of oppression across these regions. I’ve been thinking about what a more responsible way of imagining East Asian futurity might be. Rather than applying an existing label, I feel it’s important to return to the body and consider how East Asian identities have been shaped by boundaries, expectations, and orientalist projections. Although Anicka Yi may not work directly in futurist discourse, her engagement with microbes, biology, and nonhuman forms prompts me to rethink how an alternative vision of East Asian futurity might be formed.

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14H: What is one thing you would like to contribute to this world and beyond as an artist?

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MD: I want to quote a sentence from one of my African American friends. I was like, “We Are Not What We Are #1” was a work in finding a community, because I thought I had found a community. But my friend said, “Be your community yourself, and your people will find you.” I thought that was a powerful message in itself, and I think my priority as an artist is trying to understand the world, not to flaunt my experience in front of people. You always need to think about your audience, but we cannot present a perfect world. I think my purpose is to explain the world to the marginalized and oppressed. Because of our skin color and appearance, we can be oppressed in America. However, when we are outside of the US, people may treat others based on the power of their country. I want people to know that they can be privileged, and that it is also possible to be seen as weak. I think my art can be a bridge- or experience- I think I succeed sometimes in finding my community. But my art could also be a narrative; it can tell people not to be afraid of finding their community, and to also not be afraid of confronting their privileges and oppressions.​​