Like many bicultural/bisexual folk, I love a good code switch.
Which is why I hope you will know exactly how I mean sickening, as in fierce, flawless and frightening, which is how this list of arts and entertainment bosses makes me feel.
Unsurprisingly, as readers of a magazine centred around art and culture you had no shortage of Asians to Watch Out For with links to the arts and creative industries. For no particular reason, or in fact for the simple reason that I could not be bothered setting up an entirely separate cooking section, I have included the celebrity chefs in this category.
Because the list is so long, I’m gonna stop messing about and get on with the business. If you don’t know why Peril thinks arts and culture making are important, and why it is integral we see Australia’s art making reflect the diversity of Australia’s culture, then you obviously got here by mistake.
Please note that we have specifically not added any additional writers and artists from our own selections because there were TOO MANY PEOPLE HERE ALREADY AND WE ARE NOT MADE OF TIME OR MONEY AND DA FUG PEOPLE. Obviously, you are welcome to do so via the comments below and we will cut and paste and stop complaining.
Everyone here is so talented they definitely deserved a much better bio and write up, but I am hoping in this day and age of Google you will find out the truth. Because the truth is out there. Feel free to send in your corrections.
Again, in no scientific order but obviously starting with the #hashtagqueen and with a very vague approximation of vote ranking:
- Lee Lin Motherf*cking Chin. We obviously do not care who writes your tweets, just as you DGAF about it either. #PrimeChinister
- Adam Liaw, lawyer, chef, business mogul, UNICEF nutrition ambassador, man my mother wishes I would marry.
- Natalie Tran. You’re probably one of her 1.8m YouTube followers. She is 1.55m tall. I know because I measured her.
- Annette Shun Wah. Actor, writer, producer, broadcaster, theatre impresario, one of the driving forces behind Performance 4a, and the voice we keep wishing we would hear on the Qantas in-flight entertainment. The first time I was in a room with Annette, I tried very very hard not to tweet about it.
- Quan Yeomans. Frontman of Regurgitator. In 1993, around about the time Regurgitator formed, the Aria Charts listed Peter Andre at #12, Jimmy Barnes at #22, and Dannii at #43. I am sure you’ll understand the crisis Australian music was facing at the time. Quan is also the provider of some of the best expletive-laden arts career advice I’ve ever witnessed.
- Shaun Tan. Artist, illustrator, animator, filmmaker, Academy Award Winner. Ain’t no thang.
- Rainbow Chan. Musician. Texture maker. Hit this on the headphones, walking through the insanity of peak commuter action in a busy city and suddenly it’s like your brain is bubble gum and you can get through this. Because you live in an art house film where goodness badness connection occurs. It’s right around the corner. Watch the leaves amass at your feet. Marvel.
- Safdar Ahmed, cartoonist, artist, creator of Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre, founding member of the Refugee Art Project, and academic. If you think the locus of racialised xenophobia in Australia has moved to focus on Muslim communities, then check out his work to remember resistance is not futile.
- Christian “Bong” Ramilo, community worker, producer, multidisciplinary artist and one of the great energies of Darwin Community Arts. It would be remiss of us, and in many ways counter to the principles of DCA to ignore that Bong collaborates with and makes space for individual artists and the great momentum of community in a genuinely pluralistic way. So this nomination definitely goes out to the amazing art community of Darwin at large.
- TextaQueen. Felt tip powerhouse. Who hasn’t tried to woo their new indie lady-date with a set of her Textanudes playing cards? Surely, I’m not alone right?
- Jeffrey Wayne “Jeff” Fatt AM – Wiggle. The purple you think of right after Prince.
- Athena Thebus. Artist, including sculpture, video, and drawing. Trying to create space for queer life to be sustainable. I’ve been swooning since I saw her in Magic Miles by Audrey Lam.
- Yeo, musician, producer, ex-BNE, now-MEL, with sweet hooks and a very wild keytar groove. I would never lie to you.
- Eugyeene Teh. Set and Costume Designer. Started in architecture, transitioned to theatre, multi award nominee and surely winner, resident designer, MKA-hipster, space maker with impact. Theatre design can be subtle and hidden from view, or even worse, pretentiously lowbudgetblank, but good design makes space sing. We loved ya nineties throwback #whiterealness #straightwhitemen, Eugyeene.
- Hoang Tran Nguyen. We’ve been watching this artist/experience creator for a while now. But his website is down, so I’m having a hard time finding good links to their multi-spacial research/community driven art experiences, video work, and multimedia work that engages with diaspora and displacement. Link help please team.
- Felix Ching Ching Ho. Independent theatre director and performer, whose work continues to provoke and critically engage with the language required to think within, across and through the intercultural.
- Elizabeth Chong. Again my mum’s vote. What can I say, she’s classic. Both my mum and Elizabeth Chong. We have a lot more to thank Elizabeth (and her family) for than just dim sims. We have her to thank for blazing a trail on Good Morning Straya when there was so few non-white folk on television you could be forgiven we didn’t have colour TV in this country.
- Leuli Eshraghi. Thinker. Artmaker. Curator. Focused on indigeneity, language, body sovereignty, and queer possibility.
- Matt Huynh. Illustrator, comic artist. If his interpretation of Nam Le’s The Boat doesn’t break you, you have no soul. Basically.
- Merlinda Bobis. Award winning author, including winner of the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for Locust Girl.
- Yusuke Akai. Guitarist. National Jazz Awards finalist. I dated a jazz musician (twice) and it was nearly enough to kill an entire musical form for me, so when I tell you that if Yusuke’s name is on something I will go and see it because it guarantees to bring an experimental and experiential rush to my whole person, you will know that this is not because I am some kind of twisted jazz devotee.
- Margaret Zhang. Stylist, Writer, Photographer, Creative Director. Influencer. IN-FLU-ENCE. Margaret Zhang will probably run the world at 30.
- Benjamin Law, Michelle Law, Tammy Law, Jenny Law. Their doppelgangers. Combined, this multi-talented set of writers, photographers, and soothsayers brought us to tears with our first Asian sit-com-dramedy-fam, but individually they are also talented and driven in their respective fields. Collectively they possess more Twitter followers than Pauline Hanson has had fish and chip dinners. And frankly, if I had to take birth advice from someone in this bullet point, I know who I’d take it from.
- Trinh and the Screaming Moths. Sure, they’re fresh on the scene, but we predict big things.
- Teik-Kim Pok. Theatre-maker, performance artist, Asian Australian arts advocate and glorious star of the oddball winner, Alvin’s Harmonious World of Opposites. Wears no mittens.
- Nazeem Hussain. Taking your fears away one too-true joke at at time.
- Kylie Kwong, Cheong Liew, Poh Ling Yeow, Tetsuya Wakuda, Luke Nguyen. If you don’t know these people, I am assuming you either don’t have a television or don’t eat. I would love to look up all kinds of great recipes from these cook top overachievers but frankly, I am hungry right now and too lazy to make dinner for myself because obviously I am still working and I cannot even bear to look up their wikipedias for you. I don’t get paid enough to torture myself any more with the chef business. I would only be prepared to do this if Kylie Kwong married me. And that ship has sailed. Although, I have to add some personal gratitude for Poh’s existence in the world. It’s great being mistaken for her in public. Not.
Do we know who’s in government yet?
Ha! Droll.