In the blistering Texas heat, on a Saturday afternoon, Asian American creatives strolled into the coffee shop Civil Pour in Dallas for a Dallas Asian American Art Club meeting.
“I'm just really excited to meet everyone else,” said Evangelina Hsu, who is Taiwanese American and has worked as a 3-D artist. She has an online shop where she sells food-themed stickers and merchandise she designs, which depict everything from the ramen in the Studio Ghibli movie"Ponyo" to Japanese fruit sandwiches.
The Dallas Asian American Art Club, which was launched in February by Christina Hahn, started out with just a handful of people. Now, it’s a once or twice-a-month gathering of about 15 Gen-Z and Millenials. It’s a space where people can pursue their creative interests in their own way, whether they want to socialize, work on their latest project or just get feedback.
“It's just anyone who is Asian American and wants to be creative. You don't even have to do that as your full-time job,” Hahn said.
Hahn, who is Korean American and the creative director of the Dallas Asian American Historical Society, said she created the club because she struggled to find people who shared the same cultural fluency to challenge her work in a nuanced way.
“How a lot of Americans view Asian art and being Asian is very flat and very stereotypical,” she said. “So how do we move beyond that and how do we create art that is uniquely Asian American? I need people who are uniquely Asian American to be able to give me that type of feedback.”
For Asian American creatives, embracing their distinctive voice can feel like an act of defiance. On one hand, there’s defying the cultural pressure from parents and relatives to pursue non-creative jobs.
“I grew up with that same narrative of, like, ‘Art is not a sustainable field.’ ‘There is no way that you're going to be able to put food on the table,’ ” said Rachel Tse, a graphic designer for a Dallas-based agency. “So I feel like my entire life I have been rebelling against that narrative or that voice inside my head.”
On the other hand, Asian American creatives are defying stereotypes.
“You look at all of the major culture that is going on today in America that a lot of it has Asian roots,” Hahn said. “So why are you trying to say that we're not creative just because y'all prefer us to be crunching numbers for you or being tidy for you?”
Tse, who is Chinese American, said the club is exactly the kind of space she needed starting out. She is currently working with a friend on an apparel line they hope to launch this year.
Krishna Narra, who is Indian American, works in Dallas as a digital marketing specialist and is also an actor, writer, filmmaker and poet.
He recently wrote a collection of acrostic poems called "Linguistic Therapy" based on 50 words from his native language of Telugu.
“So my sales pitch is even if the poems are bad, you learn 50 words of a different language,” he said with a chuckle.
For Narra, who recently relocated from Houston, the club and Dallas at large is where he’s coming into his own as an artist.
“In Dallas, it's like where I've actually gotten to see, OK, what can I bring to another space or where am I? Like, me kind of discovering my actual voice.”
The club also celebrates that Asian American creatives and their work don’t need to look one way. Judy Liu, who is Taiwanese Chinese, balances being a writer and a full-time job as a compliance program manager. Last year, she published an Asian Western young-adult sci-fi novel "The Vending Portal."
“I wanted something that was unapologetically Asian Western, like no need to explain anything else,” she said. “I just wanted a story that we could all relate to a little more.”
Hahn said in the future, she hopes to host an art market and create an exhibition featuring artists from the club.
“I want people to feel not alone,” Hahn said. “That's my No. 1 priority, that you can be all of who you are and do all of what you want to do.”
Want to join the Dallas Asian American Art Club? Follow @daaartclub on Instagram.
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