Asia
Asia is a queer, nonbinary descendent of indigenous Khmu and Iu Mien refugees of the US's Secret War in Laos, who settled on the unceded territory of Huchiun, homeland of the Lisjan (Ohlone) peoples, now known as the East Bay Area. They’re a self-taught & emerging artist, community educator & culture worker whose work is grounded in social/environmental justice, collective liberation, and principles of ecofeminism + queer ecology. Their creative practice is shaped by their identities and lineages, as well as their relationship to belonging, place, and spiritual inheritance as a displaced indigenous person. Asia began applying art to their community work in 2019, developing culturally relevant outdoor environmental education curriculum for BIPOC youth. In 2021, they incorporated visual art into community education when they worked with Iu Mien farmers in Yolo, Solano, and Sacramento counties, creating visual tools for accessible sustainable agriculture education that centered the growers’ cultural farming practices, knowledge, & experiences. They continue engaging the community in their creative practice today as the co-founder of Cold Rice Collaborative (CRC) and Lead Artist of the Cold Rice Collaborative Creative Cohort. By visually reflecting on and contextualizing their own diasporic experiences through their art, storytelling, & archiving, Asia aims to transform and reclaim Khmu & Iu Mien counternarratives and ways of knowing/being.
What is your personal definition of home? What experiences have influenced/continue to influence and shape your understanding of home, belonging, and safety?
Home has always been an abstract concept for me. While I was born and raised in the Bay Area, I know that the first time I truly felt at home was in Portland, Oregon with my friends/chosen family. Being in community and living with fellow QTBIPOC and being affirmed in my queerness for the first time in my life helped me to feel at home specifically within my own body, which extended to my feeling of belonging to a space/place. While I have deep gratitude and love for my biological family and childhood home, I also know that I would never have felt safe enough “at home” to come into and feel empowered to be my full queer self.
I’ve also grown to understand that how and where I define home, as well as how I navigate my relationship to “home” is actually a great responsibility that ultimately impacts the land and peoples (human/nonhuman) that have lived in relation to these places since time immemorial. In that sense, home for me is also spiritual, and relational. As someone who is neurodivergent, it’s always been easier for me to form nonhuman relationships. These relationships have deeply informed how I feel belonging and understand/shape my definition of home. I feel the most at home in places where I’m able to form relationships with the land and the life that also call it home, particularly among tall trees and lots of fungi + running water, especially in the early morning quiet when the only sounds I can hear are the birdsongs, drops of morning dew falling from the canopy, and the gentle gurgle of a stream - I like to think it’s because I come from a lineage of forest/jungle and river peoples. Through these relationships, I’ve come to recognize that when land and people are separated, people are not the only ones who must mourn a loss, that land and nonhuman elements also grieve - this is evident in today’s climate crisis/collapse.
Time isn’t linear–spiritually speaking, we carry our ancestors and descendants with us everyday.
How do you hope to contribute to the healing, growth, and transformation of your people’s collective understanding of home, place, and belonging? Through your art, how do you hope to help your ancestors and descendants find home and feel + know safety?
I hope that through my work (community and creative) I can help my people contextualize our collective history and experiences as Iu Mien/Khmu peoples of the US diaspora. As indigenous + nomadic peoples, the act of shaping home and identities, culture keeping and making has never been bound to a physical place or time. I think a large part of being able to honor and live in reciprocal relationship with our current homeland and its original peoples is to understand and ground in our peoples’ own journeys to the places that we’ve settled in, to learn about the structures and systems that continue to create conditions that displace people like us, and to anchor in our resilience of surviving these systems while continuing to redefine home and adapt to new worlds. The hope is that by bridging generational and diasporic ways of being Khmu + Iu Mien, and understanding the context of our lineages and presence here in the west, we can build solidarity with other communities of the indigenous + global south/majority and work together towards a liberated world that is safe for all of our descendents and relations (human + nonhuman).
What role does art/creativity play in your life? Is this connected to your journey of belonging? If yes, how?
Much of my inspiration comes from my plant and fungal kin, particularly the relationships that they have to and with one another. When I think about creating and building, I can’t think of any better artists, creatives, architects on this planet than world-building mushrooms and plants. The way in which fungi organize resources - not just with their own kind, but with their broader community relationships - and the way plants tend to their sick and wounded by collectively sharing resources reminds me that community care, liberation, solidarity, are all things that have been in practice long before humans ever existed; that life beyond capitalism, exploitation, supremacy is possible, and that we already have a wealth of knowledge to tap into within our land ancestors - we just have to be still and quiet enough to listen. The lessons that I learn from fungi and plants help ground me in my own role and place within Earth’s current timeframe, and it reminds me that even though I might struggle sometimes to form relationships with my own (human) kind, it’s okay to find and feel belonging/community with non-human kin. (Also, I recently learned that fungi have 20k+ mating types and that gender plays no role in determining their sexual compatibilities - talk about the ultimate queer/genderqueer ancestor!)
What is one dream you have for your community?
The dream that I have for my queer, gender expansive, and biethnic kin is for us to feel enough as we are, exist unapologetically, and to show up for one another. I hope that the cultures and traditions that we continuously shape and transform help us to see ourselves and our experiences/stories as worthy of being Khmu, Iu Mien as much as the dominant, cis-hetero ways of being and existing. There are many ways of being Khmu and Iu Mien, and many cultural practices that evolve out of existing in new & diasporic ways that are just as valid as the traditions & cultures that our (living) ancestors have brought with them to the new homeland; this includes finding/developing language for ways of being/existing in between worlds, cultures, genders that may not actually be as new as we might initially believe.
How has this project influenced your understanding of community, belonging, home and/or safety?
This project has actually resulted in more questions than answers about where, how, and when I feel belonging/a sense of home. As change is an inevitable part of existence, I think that my definition of home will constantly be shifting, especially as I move through my journey of understanding and learning about myself, and where I belong in relation to the collective histories + memories of my blood, land ( from new and ancestral homelands), and spiritual ancestors.
How can people learn more about you and keep up with your work?
You can follow my personal IG account @asiawizard. To stay updated on the artwork/projects that I’m working on, you can visit asiasaechao.com. Stay up to date with the work that I’m doing through the Cold Rice Collaborative by following our IG: @coldricecollaborative, and visiting our website: coldricecollaborative.com
The Land Bears Witness, 2024
Mixed media linoprint with natural (oxalis and eucalyptus) ink wash on paper
When we have long forgotten our entanglements with each other, the land helps us to remember that our stories and liberation are bound to one another. The linoprint design alludes to the shared lineages of resistance of the Lands and peoples of Palestine, Laos, and Huichin (East Bay/Richmond), against colonial/imperial forces and pays homage to their commitment to be and stay in relationship to one another. The ink washes were made with natural inks created by the artist with materials (“plants out of place”) that they harvested and processed from local places they associate with “home”, highlighting those plants’ and the artists’ shared history/inheritance of displacement and redefining home.