“Are there really only two Asian lesbians in Chicago?”

In 1992, four authors asked this question in Outlines, the Chicago-based newspaper for gay and lesbian people, reflecting the invisibility, limited scale, and lack of activism of the Asian LGBTQI community in Chicago. As an Asian gay historian, I couldn’t help but chuckle when first reading it. However, my laughter soon turned into a sigh of disappointment. Thirty years later, while the queer Asian community in Chicago has grown steadily, queer Asian people remain marginalized in multiple ways. 

The dominant racial ideology, even within the LGBTQI community, still profiles Asian people as less desirable, submissive, and inscrutable, while the Asian community often upholds homophobic and transphobic conservatism. Moreover, public discourses and archives still haven’t paid sufficient attention to the queer Asian community. For example, the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, the largest circulating LGBTQ library in the Midwest, has very limited titles about queer Asian community in Chicago. Asian queerness still warrants more public representation, archival preservation, and critical reflection. We are still here.

Fortunately, things are changing. If the four authors in Outlines had been transported to 2024 and saw the inaugural Pride Month exhibition at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC) in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood, they would have been more than happy to see that a group of young queer Asian artists organized events, mobilized audiences, and unapologetically showcased Asian American queer experiences–just as I was, feeling proud and touched. 

Collaborating with Chicago-based art platform 6018|North, the CAMOC exhibited artworks by three queer artists, including Linye Jiang, Eugene I-Peng Tang, and Hai-wen Lin from June 16 to July 13, 2024. Ostensibly, the exhibition raised the visibility of queer issues in the Chinese community and re-centered Asian representation within Chicago’s queer community. The artists did more than that. Collectively, they explored the diverse morphology of queer relations, spanning from racial relations to kinship, from the connection between reality and imagination to the encounter between queer bodies and objects. 

“While same-sex marriage in China is still not legalized and public displays of same-sex relationships could still provoke insults and violence, these AI artworks created a vision of lesbian spousal and familial intimacy in China that was too utopian to materialize in real life, yet so visually and emotionally real to feel.”

Linye Jiang’s Lovers’ Portraits directly addressed family relations by using AI technology to generate fictional photographs of Chinese lesbian life. These pictures played around with the (im)possibility of lesbian experience. They had almost all it takes to be real captures of lesbian families: the distinct contours of facial features, natural postures, muscle lines, clothing textures, and the contrast of light and shade. In fact, my friend was surprised to find out that these pictures were AI-generated when I told her. The lengths of fingers could look a bit off-putting, but it might just be me. While same-sex marriage in China is still not legalized and public displays of same-sex relationships could still provoke insults and violence, these AI artworks created a vision of lesbian spousal and familial intimacy in China that was too utopian to materialize in real life, yet so visually and emotionally real to feel.

These idealized fictional pictures, however, did more than just present a dreamy version of lesbian relations; they also provided an opportunity to reflect on the very idea of spousal and familial relationships. Viewers can easily detect the gloomy tone of these pictures as well as the grilling gaze that was channeled right toward the audience. They were more like a Mitski song instead of a Laufey one. The mysterious darkness in these pictures balanced the sweetness of coupling and did not make the utopian idea look artificial and cheap. Moreover, the very fact that the AI model generated somber images of lesbian relationships invited so many interpretations: was the AI model so deeply trained by the symbolic system of compulsory heterosexuality that it failed to recognize the possibility of happy lesbian relationships and failed to put on smiles and shed more light on the image? Or was it Jiang’s deliberate critique of homonormativity that dictates a religious belief in monogamy and the necessity of a family with kids? Or was it an appropriation of the modern rom-com trope that treats romantic and parental relationships as the ultimate salvation from loneliness? Jiang’s artworks not only created a rainbow bubble but also unsettled the fantasy she created.

“Was the AI model so deeply trained by the symbolic system of compulsory heterosexuality that it failed to recognize the possibility of happy lesbian relationships and failed to put on smiles and shed more light on the image?”

Eugene I-Peng Tang expanded the exploration of queer relations and race. The tension in interracial intimacy is now a classic motif in Asian American literature and arts. As early as 1991, artist Richard Fung lamented, “Asian and anus are conflated” when examining the pornographic representation of Asian bodies. Scholar and filmmaker Nguyen Tan Hoang’s 1999 short film Forever Bottoms! further provided an unfiltered adaptation of the Asian bottoming body to play with the simultaneous stigmatization and fetishization of Asian bodies. 

Tang provided a fresh twist to this theme. His MSG collection featured a group of photographs of the naked bodies of Tang and his amateur non-Asian models. He first centered on the domesticity of interracial relations. The intimate encounter between Tang and his models was set against domestic backgrounds in the center of a living room, on the top of a closet, or in front of piles of books. This orchestrated everydayness invoked both closeness and alienation, revealing on the one hand the commonness of interracial relationships through an almost hyper-realistic presentation of everyday objects, and on the other, a sense of loneliness caused by the lack of active engagement with these objects.

Tang and his models further turned their bodies into the focus of the camera. Sometimes their bodies were entwined; sometimes they hugged; sometimes Tang stood soberly with his model trying to take off his pants. In all these sexually explicit positions, these models had their backs to the camera without fully disclosing their faces. On the contrary, Tang always faced the camera directly, looking straight at it, and sometimes even slanted his eyes purposefully to make fun of the Asian stereotype.

If Jiang’s AI-generated pictures presented a mysterious stare to arouse questions, Tang’s stare showcased an unmistaken resolution to reversing the “Asian and anus are conflated” statement and becoming the center of sexual agency. However, viewers might continue to wonder how Asian queer bodies can liberate themselves beyond the registers of sex?

Linye Jiang’s Tenderness as well as Hai-wen Lin’s work 7:05:51.20–7:05:51.21 presented a feasible solution to the question. These artworks focused on the feelings of the body, inviting viewers to imagine a stroke of tenderness in the water and a desire to fly in the wind. They moved beyond the exploration of human relations and went deeper into the exploration of bodies and objects. They urged us to rethink the possibility of freeing our bodies when we interact with the world. 

“Be that hand. Be that object being touched. Be water. Be whatever they want, but remember to envision the entanglement of skin and water, a smooth feeling reflecting the flexibility of queerness and reassembling the intimacy of love.”

Jiang’s video captured a hand stroking a soft object in the stream of flowing water. In contrast with Lovers’ Portraits which asked the audience to envision an almost impossible relationship, Tenderness inspired audiences to turn their imagination towards their innate feelings to find a visceral desire for softness. Be that hand. Be that object being touched. Be water. Be whatever they want, but remember to envision the entanglement of skin and water, a smooth feeling reflecting the flexibility of queerness and reassembling the intimacy of love. Hai-wen Lin’s 7:05:51.20–7:05:51.21 took a similar phenomenological approach, capturing the moment when Lin let go of a kite made of clothes in a prairie. Capturing this moment when the wind, clothes, and bodies became one, Lin invited their audiences to imagine how a queer body could free itself in the interaction with nature. 

Sitting right next to 7:05:51.20–7:05:51.21 was Lin’s installment Changing of the Winds, the most conceptual artwork in this show (in my opinion). Lin’s wooden installment, with its intentionally weathered texture, resembled the vintage Chinese folding screens seen in many antique furniture stores. On the back of the screen, Lin hung various distinct objects, including nets, ropes, symbols, book pages, brooms, fallen leaves, photos of clothes, kites, and Lin themselves. While traditional screens were used to separate the public and the private, Lin’s screen blurred this boundary by presenting all the objects they felt close to together. It was also cleverly positioned next to a traditional Chinese marriage sedan chair and Chinese closets, both from CAMOC’s regular exhibit.  They looked like two objects from the same set of exhibitions. The design of the display added a distinct layer to Lin’s already original work: while the sedan and closets present the most typical symbols of heteronormativity, Lin’s screen presents a desire to freely reorient the world, one object after another.

These artists explore the metamorphic nature of queerness, or put it differently, the infinite possibilities of queer arts. They disrupted all kinds of relationships, including familial, racial, and human-object relationships. They deconstructed heteronormativity and racism. They envisioned new possibilities of coupling, desiring, and reordering objects. These artworks also gave us a chance to conceive a different future in which Asian queerness could be more free, proudly expressed and embraced.

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CAMOC’s Pride Month Special Show ran from June 16th through July 13th, 2024 at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. Curated by JI Yang in collaboration with 6018|North, the show featured work by Linye Jiang, Eugene I-Peng Tang, and Hai-wen Lin.

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