It's been a short week, but we got another A Portfolio to share today, this time looking at Broklyn-based Augustina Wang. Augustina recently showed in her debut solo show at Sow & Tailor in LA.
Wang’s work explores her Asian femme identity through lore and worldbuilding and investigations into the machinations of power. She considers painting as a way to allow her to “roleplay” power, a force that is seemingly unobtainable to her in her body as a first-generation, Chinese-American woman. She is inspired by her childhood self, a girl who browsed roleplaying blogs, fanfiction forums, and video game sites, as a way to experience agency and community in a world that lacked it for her. Wang sees roleplay, and therefore painting, as a way to heal her trauma, whether it be self-inflicted, sexual, generational, or even primordial.
Wang is also inspired by her mother, an immigrant single mom, whose life experience echoes her daughter’s, despite the difference in time and age. Wang reconciles with how these vessels, Asian and femme, may be forever subjugated. Instead of turning to fatalism, Wang seeks to build worlds where no such history exists.
