Cultural Art Expo 2021

Cultural Art Expo, as told from the perspectives of APASA interns Maria Tsiao and Sophia Lu, featuring exclusive APASA Slack chats!

USC APASA 2020-2021 Slack Channel

#cae

Echo Tang 11:47 PM

greetings earthlings 🦑 me and leons brains have been completely dried out of creative juices so we would like you all to come up with names for the booths 🌟 failure to do so will lead to us making time for your interpretive dance in the opening 🤠 pls come up w booth names by tomorrow we would like some spicy names pls and thank you

Kimberle Sotelo 11:47 PM

did we just get threatened with an interpretive dance i-

Fear struck the hearts of our Cultural Art Expo (CAE) Committee as we frantically racked our brains for mediocre puns the Wednesday before the big event. What name could possibly match a masterclass magic lesson with Jeffrey Lee, or the amazing talent of our keychain booth with Rui Daniel?

Leon Zha 12:31 AM

Move over 2-Chainz, It's time to make some key-chainz

Indeed, we enlisted only the brightest minds in APASA to solve our crisis.

But luckily for our committee— and the audience— an interpretative dance did NOT happen.

Instead, we were greeted with warm introductions from Leon Zha (ft. bow tie) and Echo Tang, APASA’s Co-Advocacy Chairs. They persevered through technical difficulties and showcased the wonderful artists and talent for the night—makeup workshops from Sully Bautista and Alexia Sambrano, screen printing from APASA’s very own Sara Zhang, and for the main features: an opening act from glasspirits, celebrity guest Chinatown Pretty, and a closing music performance from Vietta.

First up, the USC student music group glasspirits. Raw, ingenuitive, and coupled with powerful acoustics, we’re sure that we weren't the only ones who held their breath as we listened in awe. Funky beats and clever lyrics aside, Joanna Glass and Abe Perez immediately set the tone for a night that was sure to be just as captivating as their performance.

Next, we moved onto a presentation by photographer Andria Lo and writer Valerie Luu of Chinatown Pretty, a photography project based on self-expression through clothing that collects stories from Chinatown seniors across North America. They proceeded to describe their creative process and show off incredible photographs and stories from their experiences, ranging from an elderly man with a pension for colorful ties in San Francisco’s Chinatown, to the advice they gave to “always check the socks” for unexpected insights into their interviewees.

Sharpie art made by APASA’s own Bethany Lum from Sissi Lin’s Sharpie booth.

We then moved onto the breakout room portion of the event: artist booths. Zoom chaos descended onto the screen as our over 75 participants spread out into roughly a dozen breakout rooms, ranging from a sharpie art tutorial with Sissi Lin, Native American poetry with Kolton Nephew and Maracea Chase, sculptural garments with Brian Xu, 20th-century Chinese art with Yitong Lok, and finally, ugly (but I would politely disagree) portraits with Justine Huang.

I (Maria) spent my time in Sullyari Bautista’s makeup booth, learning from an expert in all things bold and creative. She talked about her process, product recommendations, and favorite makeup artists to follow on Instagram and YouTube, as well as deeper conversations with other booth hoppers about the environmental impact and sustainability of the beauty industry. Leaving with Sully’s thoughts on shifting away from traditional beauty standards and focusing on the ethical production and consumption of makeup, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to learn more about makeup from someone who sees it as an art form and creative outlet, and not necessarily just another expectation for conventional beauty standards.

In another breakout room, I (Sophia) had the opportunity to be a co-moderator with Leon for “Meet Chinatown Pretty”. Although we originally had a whole script with questions planned out, and Leon even peer pressured me into changing into a blazer because I wasn’t dressed “formal enough” from the start, the Q&A atmosphere quickly turned into casual conversations about identity and passions between our celebrity guests and audience members. Andria and Valerie shared with us their experiences of growing up as Asian American artists (even with initial disapproval of their parents), how Chinatown Pretty is a means through which they feel like they can better connect with their own grandparents, and what the importance is of maintaining and celebrating historically ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown among other insightful topics. It was incredibly inspiring hearing what Andria and Valerie had to say, and I already know that my next trip to San Francisco will include stopping by a bookstore to pick up a copy of their first and latest book, Chinatown Pretty, to read with my own grandfather.

A collection of makeup looks done by Sullyari Bautista (@looksbysully on Instagram).
Chinatown Pretty (the book!), sharing stories of seniors all across North America (@chinatownpretty on Instagram)

To round out the night, breakout rooms were closed and we gathered back into the main room once more only to witness Leon’s inability to distinguish “Toxic” and “Baby One More Time” when introducing Vietta (Stephenie Lawrence), CAE’s outro performance.

Yi-Ann Li 8:21 PM

ok i know this doesn’t matter at all but am i the only one who thought that she’d be performing toxic but she was singing hit me baby one more time :0

Jessica Minsol Kim 8:21 PM

HAHHAHA I JUST NOTICED HAHAHAAH

Leon Zha 8:22 PM

Song names are hard :(

Echo Tang 8:22 PM

LMAOOOO MY HEART DROPPED WHEN I REALIZED THE SONG WAS DIFFERENT

Regardless of the Britney Spears confusion though, I can definitely say that Vietta brought the house (or Zoom meeting?) down. The chat became flooded with reactions of awe, shock, and chills, and we couldn’t have asked for a more powerful performance to end the night. Moving on from “Toxic,” she followed up with an equally soulful rendition of “Creep” by Radiohead, and finally, “Magnets” by Disclosure (ft. Lorde).

An “ugly” portrait of Colleen Feng and Charley Kim by Justine Huang.

The night ended with a prize raffle (that included items like AirPods, a Hydroflask, but most importantly an Appa plushie), and people left with the event with hearts full, newfound knowledge regarding poetry, magic tricks, and screenprinting, or even a personalized “ugly” family portrait.

Closing Remarks:

Thank you to all of the incredible artists as well as participants who tuned in to APASA’s 2021 Cultural Art Expo! Of course, none of this would have been possible without the hard work of Leon and Echo; tasked with planning and executing our first-ever virtual Cultural Art Expo, they went above and beyond anything we could have imagined. Their commitment to recruiting diverse student artists and creating a space where engaging conversations about art, identity, and culture could take place reflects months of hard work and slightly passive-aggressive committee Slack messages, but it all definitely paid off in the end. One of the best parts of the event was the environment it created for both artists and art-goers alike, in being able to celebrate many of the small moments captured in projects like Chinatown Pretty, while also acknowledging the circumstances in which many of these pieces are viewed now when anti-Asian hate crimes are on the rise and the future couldn’t be more of an unknown. Cultural Art Expo didn’t occur in a vacuum, and memories of misquoted Britney Spears songs and discussions about what it means to be an APIDA artist will be remembered long beyond the conclusion of an event that all started with a thinly veiled yet endearing threat to “come up with names for the booths… [or] interpretive dance .”