Interview #121— Gabby Loo
Gabby Loo is an emerging multidisciplinary artist and community arts facilitator. They are a second-gen migrant of Shan and Hakka ancestry living on the unceded lands of Whadjuk Noongar people of the Bibbulmun nation.
Their comics and illustrations have been published in Comic Sans Anthology, The Suburban Review and Djed Press. Gabby is the creator of Intercultural Creatives of WA online community group.
Gabby speaks to Steven J. Finch about intercultural solidarity, healing, creativity, and community care.
Your ongoing art project Be Nice to Friends of Colour is such an inspiring, empowering act of solidarity. How has the idea developed?
Be Nice to Friends of Colour came at a time when I was being emotionally manipulated at work and I was thinking Damn, I wish I had a t-shirt that said ‘Be Nice’ so people understood to respect me and my boundaries. As a young POC working in retail I felt like I’d had enough and wanted a project that would uplift me and act as a reminder of respect and resilience and all the histories that I come from and that I continue to experience. The project started as me making clothes by myself. But I started to think about how my mum (Stella Loo/Nang Voe Hom) could help me make clothes. She made her own clothes when she came to Perth and took pride in that skill. Especially when she was younger in Burma selling clothes to her friends.
I felt distanced from her in living out of my family home. Returning home to your parents and not having anything to talk about can feel distressing. Especially if you have lingering issues that are emotionally sensitive. Making clothes with my mum meant I could chat with her about life in Kengtung, Shan history, and my grandma who taught her how to make clothes. This first iteration of Be Nice, ‘A Long Time to Get Here’, wove together histories of my mum’s migration to Perth and also my journey of childhood into adulthood. I was in a space where I felt Western Australian history didn’t reflect contemporary Asian People of Colour living here and the experiences we go through. I wanted to share the story of my journey and the deep appreciation and love I have for my mum, her skills and what she’s been through.
Be Nice to Friends of Colour developed into a drag collaborative project, Drag 80’s Office Soiree, with Ruby Doneo, Colin Smith, Pat Bryce and you! It changed to include aspects of performance and self-invention through drag while also looking at Asian migration history in the 1980’s when the White Australia policy or Migration Restriction Act was changed but many traces of its racisms have persisted right up to today. This was partially a response to the fellowship at the State Library of WA where we definitely did not feel trusted or welcomed in the state archives.
I found participating in that project with you to be a much needed exploration of my own relationship to gendered identity. Is this an aspect you were exploring too with the drag performance?
Yeah, the project came at a point where I felt comfortable to vocalise out loud that I felt like I wasn’t just a woman. Identifying as genderqueer has been a liberating space to embrace who I want to be. It’s also a reminder to myself that I am more than the ways I’ve been disrespected when I used to identify as a woman, in having a female signifying body and appearing ‘Asian’ to white people. It’s hard to forget past experiences of tokenism, the exoticism and racist misogyny. I want to be strong now and in the future when I face similar moments. In the past it has felt soul-depleting but now I’m taking agency and healing. I am providing a space of healing for myself by confidently expressing my gender identity.
That’s been a very unfortunate feature of both our years, uncovering different versions of this same type of white supremacy that’s hidden behind what’s meant to be the neutral logic of administration.
It definitely felt like a slap in the face when we’re given this great opportunity but perhaps we got it on the basis of diversity box-ticking. Then no measures have been taken to make it a culturally safe space to be in if you’re expressing self.
Making clothes with my mum meant I could chat with her about life in Kengtung, Shan history, and my grandma who taught her how to make clothes.
Do you want to talk about a key positive moment during our Creative Fellowship at the State Library of WA, encountering the exhibition and book by Deborah Ruiz-Wall?
I met Deborah in March 2019. She wrote Re-imagining Australia: Voices of Indigenous Australians of Filipino Descent, a book and exhibition sharing stories of migration and trade between Filipino people and Indigenous people in the north of Western Australia. Specifically, Rubibi, the town of Broome and the land of the Yawuru people. I recommend her book for anyone who wants to learn more.
Another exhibition at the Maritime Museum that was a key moment was Restricted Entry, curated by Kaylene Poon and Chung Wah Association. One of the oldest community groups in Australia. This exhibition documented the lives of Chinese people who came to Western Australia prior to the 20th century.
I see these two being important figures for me this year because their work challenges the state’s fictitious colonial narratives. These are narratives that erase People of Colour and First Nations people’s shared histories of intercultural solidarity, resistance and strength when faced with adversity. Deborah and Kaylene shed light on stories I desperately needed growing up here.
Your art practice has changed from comics to a more expansive idea of graphic storytelling. Do different mediums serve different emotional processes for you?
A lot of my early comics emerged from a time when I was quite self-destructive. Some of those comics were me retracing traumatic events. This was long before I felt comfortable with vocalising what was bothering me and accessing mental health services. To painstakingly pencil, ink and shade my memories made them feel more real and valid. To draw and create comics was my main coping mechanism when I lived in my family's home. Losing myself to illustrations, panels and pages allowed me to have my own bubble, and eventually a presence in the arts. Some mediums can serve a specific purpose sometimes.
The mixed media installation Be Nice to Friends of Colour: A long time to get here really was a more healing and positive form of graphic storytelling. I had photographs of myself in the clothes that mum and I made and in locations significant to our histories, and photos of my childhood and my mum’s youth in Burma. I hand-wrote motivational signs that spoke to emotions I felt and reminders for myself. I keep reminders around my house too. I want people to be reminded of these messages, especially Friends of Colour to recognise our struggles and the complexity of issues we face. I also had smaller signs that reflected on future, present and past. While there’s still a visually sequenced narrative, the medium allows for more immediate self-representation. It’s definitely more open to other people receiving and sharing in its’ messages. It was also the first time I formally collaborated with my partner, Danyon Burge, who photographed me in the clothes I made with mum. We met and started dating when I was the emotionally closed-off comic-making sad girl, I’ve grown and opened up a lot since then. I’m really thankful and lucky to have him in my life.
To painstakingly pencil, ink and shade my memories made them feel more real and valid.
Something I admire about you is your innate understanding of racism involved in professional spaces and academic spaces.
It’s assuring to know that you feel that way. I’m frustrated with the facade of professionalism in White spaces where they implement very petty rules and patterns that make you feel bad just so they have the upper hand. And academia is such an isolating experience that makes you distant from the communities you come from. Especially as a Person of Colour going into an academic arts institution in Perth where they hardly teach beyond the Western art canon, then there’s not many People of Colour who are working in the arts, so it’s doubly isolating. I wish I realised that what they teach you is not necessarily what you have to do to be a career artist, at this point, community arts sits on a very different side of the spectrum of what they encourage you to be when you graduate from art school.
When dealing with racism and professionalism as a young Person of Colour, there is a danger of being absorbed into the capitalist faux-empowerment dream of succeeding when it’s at the cost of others. Like the White feminist logic being used in corporate spaces that exploit labour and resources of the Global South. When coming into our own as young People of Colour it’s important to be careful and question what we’ve been told to desire.
Do you have any advice for emerging community artists?
Surround yourself with people who value what you’re doing and why you’re doing it! Sometimes it feels rare to have good peers that you can resonate with, I struggled to find this in Perth until I joined communities like Paper Mountain in 2016. When you find that space where you feel like you belong, support those around you and cherish them. Collaborating together in community is healing in multiple ways.
Trust your intuition and know that saying no is important. If you come from a hardworking migrant background there’s so much pressure to put yourself second and just say yes. It’s a detriment to your health when you’re chasing work in the arts because there’s limited opportunities and little stability. My advice would be to seek other means of stability that can carry you through that won’t jeopardise your creative soul within capitalism.
Who are you inspired by?
Are you allowed to be proud of your inspirations? Haha. My current inspirations are Eugenia Lim and Justin Shoulder. I admire the consideration they put into their projects and the messages they amplify have been quite valuable to discovering extensions of self in the realm of drag.
Justin Shoulder’s collaborations with Club Ate (including Bhenji Ra), Ex Nilalang, uses myth to explore the intersections of queer identities of the Filipino diaspora. It makes me feel strong when I see artists doing work like this. As a gender queer person, I find the act of exploring inter-creature, intercultural relations through drag beyond gender binaries a powerful act for decolonising self.
I love Eugenia Lim’s invention of a shape-shifting self, one that speaks to historical past, present and beyond. Her work has explored the influences of immigration, mining and architecture on Australia’s national identity. I was mesmerised by her installation The Australian Ugliness that features her emblematic character the Ambassador moving contemplatively through urban spaces. It felt so quietly emotional to see the Ambassador slow dance with an ‘Othering Architecture’ character at a dimly lit dinner party.
I’m also inspired by peers that are supportive of what it means to have autonomous self-determined spaces where First Nations folx and People of Colour can come to share, be, and express self. That’s important. And you’re also an inspiration for me, Steven Finch, since in working together so many passages and pathways have opened up for me. Not just opportunities, but like ways of thinking. Thinking with flexibility and openness to how culturally there are so many ways and knowledges to be considered, respected and learned from.
What have you been listening to?
Mitski’s Be the Cowboy and Solange’s When I Come Home. I read an article on the parallels between those two albums and the idea of reclaiming the American cowboy archetype in the artist’s own image. Especially for Women of Colour to be the cowboy, it is to rewrite history, challenge understandings of their power and break harmful stereotypes.
Also SZA’s album CTRL. There’s a lot of sharing of wisdom, love for other people and pain on that album. She mentioned in a live performance that the song Garden (Say It Like Dat) was addressed to herself which deepened my appreciation. It’s a beautifully sung song with great raps that explores self-criticism but also through knowing that she deserves love, care and pride.
When dealing with racism and professionalism as a young Person of Colour, there is a danger of being absorbed into the capitalist faux-empowerment dream of succeeding when it’s at the cost of others.
What are you currently reading?
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I’ve found it hard to stay committed to one book lately, especially books that delve into trauma and pain, because when it starts sinking into that it's a bit too heavy. Haha, ahh I’m a bit of an open wound right now. But I’ve really enjoyed taking in the very detailed and poetic descriptions. The narrative flicks between present and past and delivers emotion in the same rhythm of life. Like trauma happens and then it pops up again and then it goes away.
How do you practice self-care?
It’s something that takes a lot of gradual growth… for me anyway… it’s hard to talk about this without alluding to a sore history.
Can we take a moment?
Okay. I’m ready. Self-care feels like a gradual process for me, especially as I’ve come from a background where my parents worked so hard and continue to do so till this day. Growing up, I didn’t have many positive examples of self-care and creating boundaries, and being able to protect oneself from being emotionally manipulated. Implementing self-care is a process of recognising how you’ve been treated in the past and knowing what suits you now, to be kind and good to yourself emotionally and mentally and knowing that it is a big journey to go through. I’m just trying to practice kinder thoughts as a good base for self-worth. I’m still working on it. Hearing about my friends talk about how they try to do similar things is really encouraging.
I appreciate Ruby Doneo and their Self and Community Care workshop at Patches of Hope and Resistance, a group exhibition I curated with you earlier this year. This workshop acknowledged the ineffectiveness of mental health services where people get put in this power dynamic with a counsellor or psych and there's no continuation of care or support between appointments. Because the work of care continues with those around you willing to have a mutual exchange of support and community, which can be transformative in so many more ways than individualised therapy. Not only in talking about your own struggles and difficulties, but also being present on purpose for other people and listening to them. This is super valuable for folx that struggle to find psychs with whom they can openly talk about racial politics and actually feel understood (since most psychs are white). The workshop also raised the idea of decolonising particular practices of individualism within settler colonialism that we are default prescribed. Self-care doesn’t have to be separate to community care. Together they can be spiritually fulfilling and helpful.
What do you think decoloniality looks like in practice?
To think using knowledge systems and referencing knowledge that aren’t majority related to the coloniser’s mindset that has aimed to erase the value and significance of those knowledge systems and ways of doing things inherited from our ancestors.
To reclaim self through the foods, arts, languages of my ancestors, and to support community gatherings that emphasise intercultural solidarity and the principle of First Nations First is something I vouch for.
The All My Relations podcast, hosted by Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene, also holds strong examples of decoloniality in practice. All My Relations, explores what it means to be an Indigenous person in 2019, engaged in relationships—relationships to land and place, to a people, to non-human relatives, and to one another.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
That’s a tough one. Haha, that question reminds me of mind maps I’ve made with multiple arms and limbs. I guess being Asian-Australian means that I hope to be able to learn and understand the true history of the place I am occupying, this place my family came to to try to have a better life. And to do so respectfully in understanding and solidarity with First Nations folx and Whadjuk Noongar people of the Bibbulmun nation.
Identity-wise, what’s important to me is finding a relationship to being Shan Burmese and Hakka Chinese that is meaningful and queer-friendly. Like, I feel displaced a lot of the time and colonialism is a bitch, but I’ll keep trying to feel at home with who I am and my friends that are on similar journeys.
I think we both find this tough, as Asian-Australian is a term we’ve both discussed not being totally comfortable using.
Yeah, I wouldn’t call myself Asian-Australian. I don’t refer to myself as Australian in any description of who I am. I just mention I grew up here. I don’t identify with this colonial state. I get the purpose of identifying as Asian. We were laughing before because we were trying to figure out if any of our friends were ancestrally related to a particular cultural group because we want to get them involved in a project relating to that cultural group, but we don’t want to ask where they’re from because we are Respectful and Polite! That’s the only purpose that I’m fine with like calling myself Asian, to relate to other Asian people.
Yeah, I wouldn’t call myself Asian-Australian. I don’t refer to myself as Australian in any description of who I am. I just mention I grew up here. I don’t identify with this colonial state.
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Interview by Steven J. Finch
Photographs by Leah Jing McIntosh