WELCOME TO ALICIA LAND!
Multimedia Artist with focuses in Music, Fashion & Photography/Videography
Until I was 12, I wanted to cross “曼淩” off my passport to be a “real American” who didn’t need a Chinese name. The culprit of my desire? “Where are you really from?”, “Ching-Chong!”, “Your food smells so bad.” Instigated by casual microaggressions, we erase our cultures to be digestible for white America. Yet, no matter how many traditions we ignore and hide our Asian names from the public, we cannot wash our cultures from our identities as if they were a yellow stain on a white shirt.
Using acrylic, paper, typography, performance, photography & film, I created “Laundry Day”, a real-life installation that visualizes the cycle of whitewashing embedded into Asian Americans and post-colonial Asian cultures.
Laundry Day
Stop Motion Video, Photography & Installation
Photography + Process
Revolution of Our Times
In continuation of “Laundry Day,” I explored using the papers to showcase an abstract depiction of my version of a hero - a protestor for the freedom of Hong Kong through creating a vinyl poncho and chest plate.
I was inspired by the resilience and power of my people to join marches in Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui, and Admiralty at nine, when the Yellow Umbrella movement sparked peaceful protests in Hong Kong’s narrow streets, and at thirteen when the same streets were filled with anti-extradition protestors. Since I bore the yellow ribbon and high-held umbrellas of multiple colors in 2014 and sang songs of freedom as I marched amongst those brutalized by the Hong Kong police in 2019, my hero can no longer be one with cartoonish superpowers. My hero is grounded in reality; a dreamlike vignette falls over a Hong Konger who yells “REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES.” or an American who fights for George Floyd. My heroes stand up for their freedom - no matter how tough the fight becomes.
Fashion & Photography - Semi Transparent Vinyl + Acrylic on Paper
Process
Fragments of Femininity
Fashion & Photography
Superimposed images showcasing an emerging identity through toxic masculinity.
After designing and constructing the dress shown in the photo in 2021, I collaborated with a film student at my high school where I photographed the model using different ISO settings, and different lighting settings on a set of Dracast lights set up by the film student. After the photoshoot, I used Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to superimpose two images atop each other and color grade, to convey a valiant realization in the model’s ability to combine masculinity and femininity as a teenage boy.
CYBERPUNK EMULSION
PROCESS
Fashion, Videography & Sound Design;
Vinyl Pleather - Crocodile Print & Graystone.
To explore using special fabrics, I illustrated an initial design consisting of a garment with a similar shape that would incorporate working with leather. I created patterns for the piece by drafting on dotted paper and using fashion blocks, then making a prototype in muslin to drape and modify the garment. I utilized the colors of the Hong Kong flag and a dragon-scale texture on the neckpiece to symbolize my upbringing in Kowloon (translating to nine dragons), Hong Kong, and used lights neon lights, textures that wouldn’t seem to fit together if set apart, weird fabrics, and a tight-fitting silhouette with provocative cutouts to symbolize my multifaceted identity. With the help of film students at NYU and a model, we curated the image to be an overload of different ideas that meshed together in a way that mystically works to symbolize me as an emulsion of ideas from many cultures.
Pixiedust
Native American Glassblowing
& Graphic Design
Expression of shadow in glassblowing & jewelry.
YOU DREAM OF WALLS THAT HOLD US IMPRISONED
Fashion, Video & Photography
I grew up too fast.
After my mom passed when I was eight, I was forced to develop and mature faster than other kids my age. I was tasked with taking care of my little brother, and processing the concept of death and grief while my brother and I were plucked from Kuala Lumpur - the place I called home with my mom, to live with my dad in Hong Kong, I lost my whole support system and was told to fend for myself. As a child, I was unable to conceptualize a childhood where things were normal; where the only thing I had to think about was play and school. After the traumatic experience, even if I tried to use my imagination for something childlike, or fun, I continue to dream of walls that hold me imprisoned as I fail to conceptualize imagination outside of the boxes of a grim reality including grief, mature concepts, and adulthood. At 8, I lost my childlike imagination of sunshine and rainbows. In this piece, I try to reclaim my childlike imagination through the theme of organized chaos within fashion, typography, video, and photography.
ORGANIZED CHAOS
FASHION COLLECTION ILLUSTRATION, FLATS & PROCESS
Beauty is often thought to be found in stability, repetition, and organization, but nothing is ever as clean as it seems. I use images of hard times mixed with calming and beautiful pictures of flowers and the beach, colors that don't go all too well together to create stories that don't make too much sense but convey beauty in chaos. As a child, I grew up too fast and never felt right in play. In Organized Chaos, I find ways to have fun and explore my childlike imagination - that doesn't always make sense - while being organized enough so the adults won't stare.
Flower @ The End of the World
Songwriter, Producer, Singer, Audio-Engineer.
In “Flower @ the End of The World,” I juxtaposed acoustic songwriting style with electronic and acoustic musical elements and a lot of autotune to create a dystopian atmosphere that highlights the song's concept of accepting an inevitable end of the world with harmonies from my friend and fellow singer/songwriter Kat Roshan. Produced using Ableton Live.
(Electronic audio version below)
Music Performance & Audio
Mother
I started writing songs about how I felt at three. My mother went missing aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 when I was eight. I wasn’t able to write a song about her, or my grief until I was sixteen. It was never the time to capture the feeling of visceral grief that transcended tears until last year.
“Mother” started out as bare chords and a concept of writing about my mom. After building on the first verse and chorus, I manipulated bought audio samples and synthesizers to create an atmosphere through sound. I wanted it to sound like the scary part of the ocean - the part where you drown. For the performance, I collaborated with a film student at my high school to shoot a visualizer. We curated clips where I submerged myself in water. I wanted the video to feel uneasy adding to the melancholic yet frightening feeling of the song in the live performance.
Music Performance & Film Visualizer
Hopelessness & Kim Jong Un
PROCESS
Additional Self-Portrait Concept:
10 seconds.
“Hopelessness & Kim Jong Un” is an original track I released on all streaming platforms in May of 2022. I produced, wrote, and recorded the song in the summer of 2021, detailing my feeling of being in a hopeless and depressive hole during that time. Taking things to the extreme, I wrote of escapism as a way to deal with negative emotions. This song quite literally saved my life, as instead of indulging in the actions I sing about in the song, or finding other means of dealing with my declining mental health at that time, I made this song (alongside working on other music projects) as a creative outlet.
I used Ableton Live to produce the track and I as wanted to create my own visualizer for the songs’ release on Spotify, I used Adobe Photoshop to edit a picture of my Driver’s Permit. I then filmed moving “headshots” on a white textured background and used Adobe Premiere Pro to make some of the background texture transparent and make the "headshots" black and white. I overlayed my “headshots" in Adobe After Effects on the permit and bounced back to Premiere Pro to combine the audio-visual elements and color grade.
LOST MEMORIES FIRST CLASS
Sculpture; wood & paper
At fifteen, I moved to California to attend a boarding arts high school. Amidst strict COVID restrictions, and in attempting to establish California residency, I haven’t been back with my family in Hong Kong in over a year and a half. In California, I found a chosen family, who I have created new memories with. Alike me, my dad and brother moved houses while I was away, creating new memories without me.
Mail is the only way I can touch the same objects as my dad. We never send each other gifts due to the expensive shipping costs but imagine if my family in Hong Kong could just touch the same memories I made in California as if they made them with me. The package is wrinkled with a pink slip on the label signifying the different places we’ve gone apart from each other throughout the years, yet the printed label remains pristine as the package doubles as a stool - allowing for new memories, and wrinkles to be set by whoever dares to perch upon the memories.
