Anna Yum with her cat Kaja: Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023

Phoebe Wong: Chinatown, New York, 2023
"I grew up a few blocks away from the World Trade Center in Tribeca. My mother's family had been living there since the 80s, an area they chose due to its proximity to Chinatown but with more spacious dwellings. Back then it was a very quiet pocket of downtown Manhattan mainly composed of industrial buildings and a few new condos with a view of the Hudson River, a far cry from the ritzy neighborhood people know now. It's difficult for me to recall my life in NYC before 9/11, especially because of how much of where I spent my childhood was destroyed and rebuilt. Chinatown remains a place of great comfort - change happens at a slower pace there compared to the rest of the city. It's where my grandparents met, where my family's restaurant used to be, where I spent most of my childhood weekends with family and in Chinese school, the source of food on the dinner table, and much more.
My father and paternal family live in Hong Kong and I also grew up visiting them regularly. It gave me some perspective of what it is like to not be seen as a minority, but being an ABC / "jook sing" came with a constant struggle of being perceived as too white or too Asian depending on which side of ocean I was on. I once heard someone Japanese but living in America for a long time respond to the question of their relation to race and nationality as "I feel 100% Asian-American", and that statement feels very applicable to my stance on the subject. I remember always correcting people that Hong Kong was not the same as China, that I was Chinese and not Korean or Japanese, and that I spoke Cantonese and Toisan but not Mandarin... The list goes on. Many Chinese people insisted I must be half white because I Iooked a bit different. I heard it so often I kind of gave up on needing acceptance from others, which gave me confidence to stand out on my own.
My love for clothing started as a conduit for fantasy and transformation. I spent a lot of time alone as an only child, playing by myself, drawing, reading, imagining other worlds. I told my family I wanted to be a fashion designer at age 7 - long before I understood what the industry was. I figured out that I was more of an artist and craftsman than a designer while in college at FIT for fashion design. I need to create things with my hands and although physical labor like that doesn't pay very well, it is immensely fulfilling. I try to invest in articles of quality that will last me years and often form sentimental attachments with pieces in my possession for a while. It's important to me that I can wear them in good conscience so I lean towards natural materials that do less harm to our planet. They're tools in sculpting who I am and how I feel, as well as being armor and comfort."

Andrew Rusli: Ridgewood, Queens, 2023

Shelly Wong: Woodhaven, Queens, 2023

Jessica Lưu Pelletier: Park Slope, Brooklyn, 2023

Colby Sato: AKA Sativa Sunset - Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023

Jessica Lưu Pelletier: Park Slope, Brooklyn, 2023

Grade Solomon: Ridgewood, Queens, 2023

Shelly Wong: Woodhaven, Queens, 2023
"I was born and raised in Woodhaven, Queens. As an Asian American woman growing up in NYC, I experienced a lot of racism where racial slurs were thrown at me, and in turn made me very self-conscious of my Asian features. I had a lot of assimilating to do growing up and I learned to adapt to different groups of people outside of my own kind. I even gravitated towards the same groups of people that would make micro-aggressions and racist jokes. I wanted to feel a sense of belonging because I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.
I’ve been living in the same house in Queens my entire life. My grandparents and parents were artists so I’ve been surrounded by art my whole life. I’ve been taking photos since I was 8 years old. I always had a camera on me. For some reason, I thought I would lose my memory one day and I made sure to capture photos of my friends, places I’ve been, or just cause. I’ve been into magazine collages since the pandemic and I enjoy choosing images I’m drawn to and being in control of where to arrange them. I love creating my own universe and it has been a great way to channel my emotions and what has been on my mind lately.
I’m also an art educator and I absolutely love what I do. Providing a safe space for the youth to create has been such a rewarding experience for me and I’m thinking about getting into social work recently. In my 20’s, I spent a lot of time going out with my friends and figuring out my identity versus in my 30’s now I’ve gone inward and have been spending more time with my family. I’ve been slowly getting in touch with my roots and learning to embrace my identity as a Chinese American woman. It has been such a nourishing journey."

Andrew Rusli: Ridgewood, Queens, 2023

Colby Sato: AKA Sativa Sunset - Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023

Jessica Lưu Pelletier: Park Slope, Brooklyn, 2023
"For my living, I’ve been wearing a bunch of different hats in Entertainment. I’m always exploring as much as they’ll let me, so I’m hesitant to officially call myself anything besides a multi-hyphenate. It’s befitting of my personality, but these days I do wish it was valued more on average (both monetarily and otherwise). You hear it all the time and I knew it going in, but it’s a lot tougher to navigate than I think I could even conceptualize at the beginning. It’s like…you see the glass ceiling from the bottom of a ladder and you’re like “okay,” but then you climb up, and you find out that it’s actually polycarbonate. It’s that kind of feeling. It can really get you down, thinking about what you’re supposed to do once you get up there, but then you’re already so far up the ladder that you’re also hesitant to turn around. I think a lot of people experience that feeling, even in other industries. I’ve found this stuck feeling to be one of the most pervasive and hardest to deal with as an adult. I was always on the move as a kid. Roughly every 2-3 years, we’d move continents in search of work. I wasn’t a military kid either, so I was going to local schools and often the only kid in my class going through those kinds of changes. Thinking on all that, I think the ways I express myself now have become little acts of rebellion and freedom for me in a place where I feel stuck. When I moved around a lot, it was more practical to have less stuff and have kind of a shy personality. Now I have tons of stuff, tons of personality, and tons of pride in the places and cultures I’ve come from. They’re everyday comforts during turbulent times - physical reminders that it’s okay to focus on the little joys, to play, to take up space, and to plant roots as my true self for the right now."

Phoebe Wong: Chinatown, New York, 2023

Andrew Rusli: Ridgewood, Queens, 2023
"My name is Andrew. I make music under the name Andrew Ugh.
I grew up in Central Pennsylvania. My mother was born in Taiwan but grew up in England, and my father is from Hong Kong. I come from a loving but very uprooted family. My father's side were ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia until just after WWII when my grandfather fled, eventually settling in Hong Kong. My mother's parents fled China during the communist revolution. And my parents met in America. For the last 100 years, nobody in my direct family lineage has ever remained in the country where they were born. I guess we'll see what happens with me. My family has been successful in many walks of life, but like all immigrants, we had to leave our roots behind. I think that's a lot to give up.
Regarding my style: My style is still developing. I don't have a good sense of interior design. My apartment is really minimally decorated. Buying plants seems to be the move. I also got into fashion just recently, which is pretty late in life compared to many people in New York. I'm still figuring it all out. Let me put it this way: I have a pair of Italian leather boots and I also use a cardboard box as a garbage can.
Right now I'm working on some indie pop music. I like a lot of different music, but during the pandemic I got really into 80's pop for some reason. I would say the sound of my album is a mix of 80's pop, RnB, and guitar. My sibling OHYUNG is helping me produce everything. I actually have a music degree, but haven't put out anything in years. It's been a long time coming, but it also seems like just the beginning."

Phoebe Wong: Chinatown, New York, 2023

Shelly Wong: Woodhaven, Queens, 2023

Grade Solomon: Ridgewood, Queens, 2023

Colby Sato: AKA Sativa Sunset - Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023

Jessica Lưu Pelletier: Park Slope, Brooklyn, 2023

Phoebe Wong: Chinatown, New York, 2023

Anna Yum: Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023
"being mixed race is the constant feeling of otherness. having the world decide incessantly who you are and what you bring to the table. people asking you where you are from and then again where are you really from. the lingering curious stares as people passed and saw my family, sifting a way of how we all fit together. feeling otherness on my Korean side as they hand everyone else chopsticks and me the fork. hearing my name sliced and diced around the kitchen table, the only one not speaking the mother tongue. feeling otherness on my Black side with my cousins asking why I act and talk white. that i’m not Black enough. embracing myself and the intergenerational, intersectional ties that my identities bring have felt like a battle within myself to prove to everyone that i belong and that I am here. at the age of 24 going into my 25th year, I’ve never felt more conflicted yet connected with myself from all the experience and challenges that the world has posed me. I’m constantly overlooked and when I tell people that I’m mixed they assume “oh 1/2 of this and 1/2 of that” but I’m here to say that there is no division of who I am but that I encompass all and that’s enough because it’s enough for me."

Shelly Wong: Woodhaven, Queens, 2023

Andrew Rusli: Ridgewood, Queens, 2023