The China Project

263 WILLIAM YANG: LIFE LINES there was a Mardi Gras that was a symbol of the movement. 3 I do see my Chinese identity as similar to that — there are differences, but the processes are similar. If you look at it, my ethnicity was suppressed, both by the way I was brought up and by the cultural standards of the day. There was a very strong signal that it was undesirable to be non-white and you didn’t have a sexual identity. All the identities that I latched onto were white identities. When I started coming out as Asian in the early ’90s it was relatively new. While making Sadness , I very strongly sensed that although people knew that there were Chinese in Australia from the gold rush and there was a Chinese restaurant in practically every town, people had never heard the Chinese tell their own story. I can’t think of many Chinese stories before that. I do think I was one of the first, at least performatively, to start telling Australian–Chinese stories. In the ’90s there was a great blossoming of multicultural stories. Lots of books came out. There was Pauline Hanson in the ’90s too, so there was that very conservative social view as well. 4 Like a backlash. Yes. I was part of the Sydney Asian Theatre Season associated with the Belvoir Street Theatre in the early ’90s, and I still am associated with another group, Performance 4A, which tries to promote Asian performative culture. We still feel that it’s hard for actors to get parts because of the way they look. In some ways there has been movement into the wider community but it’s still hard. Mainstream culture is so dominant that it’s hard if you are in any way marginalised to actually get a look-in. So you think in some ways it hasn’t changed much at all? Yes, I would say that. In some ways it has, but in some ways it hasn’t. Perhaps it never will, because that is just one of the ways of dominant cultures. I think there’s probably more awareness — people don’t bat an eyelid if there is a Chinese actor in a soap opera or something like that, but there still aren’t many of them. Your new work Life lines shows portraits of family members from several generations and from around the world. I’m interested to hear about your thinking behind this work. I have kept up a collection of photographs of my family — which I have shown in dissolve and performance pieces in the theatre and in exhibitions in galleries — so this is another presentation of it, in an exhibition form. The strength of the work is that it’s all one family and because it’s my family, I’m closely connected to it. I’ve done three performance pieces about my family, Sadness , The North and Blood Links ; probably four if you want to include China . I have the advantage that people identify me as being Chinese, so I can tell a more convincing story because of the way I look. I’ve managed to turn that around to my advantage if I’m telling a Chinese story. I’m Australian, I identify as being Australian; it’s like a disguise that I’m being Chinese and people believe me. I can certainly tell that story about my Australian–Chinese family, and I think I’ve told most aspects of it. I realised quite early in the piece that I only have one story, and I have to keep reinventing it from a different angle. And the incorporation of the historical Chinese sites in Australia? I’m creating a cultural landscape really. So these people, the faces, all exist within an Australian–Chinese landscape. I particularly like the Chinese artefacts set in Australian environments, like the Chinese shrine in the Cooktown cemetery which translates as ‘Regard As If Present’. Having been to China many times in different capacities — as a tourist, visiting your ancestral village, or working there as an artist — has your relationship with the country changed as you have become more familiar with it or as you access it in different ways? China’s a big place and you can only skim the surface of it really. Because I’ve got Chinese blood, I’ve got a link to it, and when I first went back to China people embraced me and said ‘Oh, you’ve come back home’, and it was very much like a homecoming for me. It’s a very powerful emotion to feel that you’ve discovered your roots. I’ve gone back to China five times now, and I like China a great deal, and I do feel a sense of identity with being Chinese, but I realise that I can never be Chinese. I can’t speak the language, and I really don’t penetrate into China very deeply. Most of my experiences in China tend to reinforce the fact that I’m Australian. That’s not to say that I don’t identify with China, or don’t have meaningful experiences when I travel there. above Publicity photograph for Year of the Snake Party, Asian Lesbian and Gay Pride, 2001 Digital print / 45 x 30cm / Collection: The artist My American relatives, the Fukudas, Los Angeles 1993 Digital print / 30 x 45cm / Collection: The artist opposite “Regard As If Present”. Chinese Shrine, Cooktown Cemetery 1990 Digital print / 30 x 60cm / Collection: The artist Seals, Beijing 1989 Digital print / 31 x 45cm / Collection: Anthony Weller