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About
Wei
Ming Dariotis is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies,
with an emphasis on Asians of Mixed Heritage and Asian Pacific
American Literature, Arts, and Culture at San Francisco State
University. She is the Faculty Advisor of the Hapa Club at SFSU
and she co-founded the San Francisco Chapter of Hapa Issues
Forum, a national organization dedicated to Asians of Mixed
Heritage. Wei Ming Dariotis is a member of the Advisory Boards
of Pacific Fusion TV,
iPride and Kearny
Street Workshop and on the Board of the Asian
American Theater Company.
Her
publications include, "Developing a Kin-Aesthetic: Multiraciality
and Kinship in Asian and Native North American Literature,"
in Mixed Race Literature, ed. by Jonathan Brennan (Stanford
University Press), and "On Growing Up Queer and Hapa"
in the Multiracial Child Resource Book, eds. Maria P.P. Root
and Matt Kelley (Mavin Foundation).
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Education
2000,
PhD: Literature,
University of California at Santa Barbara
1991,
BA: Literature and Creative Writing,
University of Washington, Seattle
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Artist
Statement (kind of)
How
has being [an] Asian American [woman] affected your art?
I
have to combine these two questions because I am an Asian American
Bi woman—I am not gendered separate from how I am raced,
and vice versa. My being a woman is integral to my identity
as an Asian American—I experience being in this body as
a mixed heritage Asian American woman; sometimes mistaken for
Latina, West Asian, Eastern European, but always racialized,
and always as an ethnic minority “exotic” woman
is sexualized. These themes and issues are integral to my work,
whether I explore my own, and my family’s, personal history
and identity or I consider these issues in larger social and
political contexts. My mixed heritage and my identity as a Bi
woman (I don’t say “Bisexual” because it mistakenly
emphasizes the sexual, when what is at issue is gender—I
can be attracted to people of either, or any, gender) are also
connected for me—they are both a form of transgressive
sexuality that challenges/contradicts normative ideas of sexuality
and identity. I am a Bi Hapa woman.
How
do you work in your medium?
I
can’t stick to just one thing. As a young child I began
to paint (watercolor) and draw. When I first moved back to SF
I took up collage, a medium of assemblage and juxtaposition.
I also make beaded jewelry, which is a process similar to collage—combining
different items into unique creations. I find all of these forms
of visual composition also connected to my writing (poetry,
fiction, and academic) and I often incorporate text (my own
or found) into my visual work. Is the medium the message? My
collage work is, I think, very tied to my content, which is
often about mixed heritage—or also finding what is out
there in terms of media images, and taking them for my own use,
refocusing and showing how I see the world—and rejecting
how the world sees me (and my sisters and brothers, our mothers
and fathers, particularly as people of color).
How
has growing up wherever you grew up or living where you now
live affected your art?
San
Francisco. This is where I grew up in my most formative years
(4-18) and this is where I have always returned and have been
making my home again since 1997. This is the place of my memories,
but more important for me now is that this is the place of my
communities. I feel at home here because I am “normal”
here. The way I look, talk, and dress. And this is where I feel
connected to a family I have chosen of extended friends and
community members. The Asian American and mixed heritage arts
communities are thriving in the Bay Area, and I work in these
communities as an organizer (Kearny Street Workshop Advisory
Board, Asian American Theater Company Board) and as an artist.
Seeing the work of my friends and community members inspires
me. Participating in creative workshops, and bringing those
creative workshops into academic settings (conferences and even
my graduate seminars) is a vital connection between my personal
artistic life, my community work, and my “day job”
as an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at SFSU.
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