“I can’t even begin to describe this week. A gathering and sharing of knowledge, community and kinship… and so much more. To be with East and SE Asian women is special in many ways – including everyone is about the same height, we all sit cross legged on chairs and other funny little moments where you notice you aren’t the odd one out…”
For a week Hawkwood hosted the East Asian Ticket Club for an artists residency. While there, the nine creatives both ran, and participated in, a host of sessions and workshops. They delved into the themes of creativity, inspiration, identity and culture.
The first day explored narratives, decolonising work and thinking about ancestry. The second day started with gender and sexuality, moved to reimagining futures, and closed with worlds without borders. On day three, they looked at creating narrative with expertise, and wearable sculptures. Then on the final day they looked at the idea of anatopism.
Each session they covered a different theme, allowing the group to devote time to each one. These sessions allowed each person to express themselves in different platforms and formats.
“Delving into eco-agency, ancestral knowledge, place-making and sisterhood. Serious laugh and clown tears over the lush week of Hawkwood Residency with incredibly artistic and intelligent women whom I already miss so much…”
“To be southeast Asian in the UK is to be both invisible and visible, when made targets of derision or ‘model minority’ behaviour. Our names … are both public and personal — meaning mispronunciations erase parts of ourselves, just as reclaiming that identity marker can be our hidden strength. … And we don’t need permission to direct how we are seen.
The word refugee … is historically used to insult us, but the oppressor’s language is also a means to reaffirm our survival amid violence … What other knowledge and empathy do we gain in our displacement? Language changes all around us … and we are part of that. New slang, new words, new pronunciations. Words don’t shift on their own. We must do the shifting…”
Through it all they took time to understand the experience of being Asian in the UK. Each explored how their ancestry affects their identity. They became masters of themselves, and experienced the creativity it brought to them. Thankfully, They were kind enough to document the process.
Credit to Anna Sulan, Jennifer Tang, Kimvi Nguyen, Nhu Xuan Hua, Georgina Quach, Tina Ma, Young Sook Choi, Anna Lau, Elisabeth Gunawan, and Moi Tran of the East Asian Ticket Club.
We loved being able to help, and host, such a creative process. We’d love to have them back for another residency, or for more opportunities to support more artists.
And if you’re interested in finding out more about the East Asian Ticket Club, their work and what they do, please head over to their Instagram to check it out.
