HOW can an image reveal an individual story AND a shared south East Asian heritage?

PROJECT: MIXED EMOTIONS
ARTIST: ELLAMAY FITZGERALD
PROJECT PARTNERS: BIG CITY LIGHTS, REGIONAL ARTS DEVELOPMENT FUND GOLD COAST

Mixed Emotions is a community engaged project that explores identity, culture and belonging of Asian Australian people. The project is grounded in the artist's own experiences growing up mixed-race in Australia and being disconnected from her Thai culture. This project documents similar stories told by people from diverse Asian Australian backgrounds and aims to create visibility, cross-cultural awareness and understanding within the broader community. The research and development undertaken during this project will expand the artist's lens-based practice with the aim of forming a participatory outcome that engages with a wider audience.

Mixed Emotions (Portrait of Lisa and Ruby) was curated into the inaugural Big City Lights in 2022. This facet of the project captures moving image portraits of people within the Asian diaspora. Constructed using cultural artefacts belonging to the subjects, the work reveals individual stories defined by growing up mixed race in South East Queensland, and unites connections and crossovers of culture for second generation Asian Australians. Slow-moving video and still photography capture Lisa Tran Kelly in her mother’s Ao Dai dress dancing with a lotus flower symbolic of Vietnamese culture. Incense smoke drifts out of earthy pots and jade coloured jewellery pays homage to Ruby Yu-Lu Yeh’s Taiwanese heritage.