How has your identity shaped how you love?

I feel like love, in all sense, whether friendship, familial, pets, passions, survival, is really hard to notice and come by. Most of the time, I really try to hide the love I have for people, but I’m learning to let it go. I’m an emotional person, and love is one of the most intense. You need to learn and let yourself love in order to be loved.

– Jojo Rivas

I didn't find my identity until recently. In that time, I was a mirror for the way other people love; eventually, I absorbed them. I think the lack of identity helped me find happiness in others. I love learning about what makes people tick, and it helped me love certain things about myself, too. I needed that experience to develop on my own.

– Ki

I am not so sure how much my identity has shaped how I love compared to my experiences. I think that my experiences as an Asian American, have deeply impacted the ways I express and interpret love. Seeing it in the subtle acts of service and care for one another. I think about how my childhood growing up in an immigrant community has shaped the ways in which my peers expressed our love for one another, and how the adults around us did as well.

– Chris Fong Chew 招偉明

My identity has shaped how I love because I've learned not to change parts of myself to receive love from others. Growing up, I constantly found myself desperately trying to fit into a mold, omitting or overemphasizing parts of my identity, and changing myself so that others would look at me favorably. I would do anything for those I loved; including changing what they did not like about me, even if it was authentic to my character. As I'm getting older, I've learned that the right person will love all parts of me, regardless of what I show them.

– Caroline Hsu

howhasyouridentityshapedhowyoulove?

Growing up with Chinese parents, they never had a lot of PDA or even said that they loved each other in front of me. Of course I knew that they did, given how they stayed together in a longdistance marriage during an economic recession, but their displays of affection never aligned with what I saw on mainstream media. Through my personal romantic relationships, I’ve definitely had to confront that and find my healthy ways of supporting a partner.

– Sophia Wang

I am a Korean-American artist from Alabama, working primarily from my family's albums to look into the matrilineal heritage that comes with me and the women around my everyday life. Using the family albums, I create compositions where my loved ones’ beings and memories are shown and centered. To create these compositions is to capture the vibrancy of the materials and memories held by individuals who are culminations of past experiences, joys, trauma, and lives. I see my artwork and research practices as a DIY conspiracy board that is unraveling, revealing, and affirming traces of my family's existences. This is how I can express my affection towards my heritage.

In the presented artwork of this occasion, "The Cowboys," it is composed of forty screenprints that tile and tessellate into an approximately 8 feet tall wallpaper installation. The images of my parents are pulled from an album of their dating photographs. They are screen-printed in gold against the crimson red background and with this act of multiplying this moment of affection and their presence over and over again, I re-imagine my parents as Asian cowboys living life with no regrets.

– Julie Lee

There is something about growing up without a proper example of love, that threatens your image of love later on. In the time it has taken me to heal from the empty words shared between my parents, I have encountered a variety of emotional encounters that have slashed and reopened wounds I never knew existed. I wish I could look back at my younger self and tell them that they were loved. Give them a hug, wipe away their tears. Instead, I remember how I looked around for superficial sources of love to ease the pain, and in turn made it harder to recover.

I spend my days trying to remember that love is not ideal thing. It is not a picture perfect rendition of the sparks shared between the protagonist and the unexpected love interest. It is not the mother knocking on her child's door, and apologizing for the years of miscommunication and hurt. It is the joy of seeing the sun rise in the morning, and knowing that I will stop to watch it set at the end of the day. It is the brief glance I make to the passerby across the street, acknowledging one another's existence, and trusting that our smiles will be remembered.

– Anonymous