In spring 2024, the BIPOC, Access (students with neurodiversity, chronic pain, and/or disability), LGBTQIA+, and QT BIPOC student groups collaborated to create an on-campus art show with the theme of 鈥淟iminality.鈥澛� 天美视频 students and alumni who identify as underrepresented within the context of 天美视频 and/or within their profession had the opportunity to share their artistic and creative work together. The concept of the Underrepresented Voices art gallery began in 2023 when student groups co-sponsored the inaugural show.

Organizers described this year鈥檚 theme: 鈥�鈥楲iminality鈥� could be as broad as anything you, as an underrepresented student, would like to express about yourself. Or, it could be as specific as invisibility, minoritized experiences, subjugated knowledge, or beauty in the margins, the sacred mystery in your culture or identity, etc.鈥� In addition to representing the BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, QT BIPOC, and Access student groups, the students who participated were also representative of the three degree programs: Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology (MACP), Master of Arts in Theology & Culture (MATC), and Master of Divinity (MDiv).聽

As artist Roy Mong commented, the diversity expressed within the 鈥淟iminality鈥� show extended to the wide variety of media and art forms represented as well.聽 Artists displayed works with acrylic paint, oil paint, oil pastels, gold leaf, watercolors, cardboard, wood, and various fabrics. Some of the pieces in the show had been created as final projects for the Winter 2024 course titled 鈥淣arrative, Identity & Asian American Experiences,鈥� taught by Dr. Jermaine Ma.

The 鈥淟iminality鈥� show launched during spring residency, and the artists had the opportunity on Friday afternoon to share their experiences and insights with their classmates, both related to making the pieces as well as sharing them publicly. Students discussed themes such as courage and vulnerability. Artists shared their anxieties about visible imperfections, and wrestling with the felt need to justify or explain their work. They also described how they challenged themselves and learned through the creative process from exploring cultural identities to understanding and practicing new techniques. For example, Sunghee Kim used watercolor painting to display Jo-kak-bo, a traditional Korean patchwork technique, and Ryan Ho shaped bass and walnut wood into Kumiko patterns, a Japanese art style from the 7th century. Roy Mong described how the use of different colors helped him to integrate and appreciate different aspects of himself and his experiences.

Inspiration was another theme. The 2023 gallery had encouraged this year鈥檚 artists: in seeing the work of others they were inspired to share their work as well, to continue inspiration and conversation for future generations of students. The 2024 show also continued the themes of collaboration and engagement: two artists invited interaction and responses through a QR code while other artists invited sensory engagement through touch. Students at the reception expressed their gratitude and wonder to the artists for the depth of expansion and interconnection with the works.

Another theme that emerged was how uniqueness and individuality were expressed within the diversity of the art and media on display in the gallery. 鈥淏y being significantly and uniquely you, you can encourage and uplift others. You are helping further the conversation,鈥� said Roy Mong. As in 2023, belonging emerged as a theme as well. Natalie Ng described feeling 鈥�Not Chinese enough. Not white enough鈥ith liminality, I鈥檝e learned to somehow embrace it and be ok in the uncomfortable spots.鈥� Describing liminality, Mong shared, 鈥淭he edge is where you live.鈥� 鈥淢aking the unseen seen is the whole point of the gallery,鈥� said Ng.

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In this interview, Tara shares her artistic process and describes how her time at 天美视频 shaped her understanding of herself and her work.

What draws you to your art?聽

I am a collage artist using paper already saturated with color, pattern, and movement, to create beauty. I love color and pattern. I鈥檓 overwhelmed by beauty, the way it hits me. I find myself drawn to this idea of the encounter with beauty, the pursuit of beauty, as described by John O鈥橠onoghue, a fellow Irish mystic. I was born in Ireland, lived there for 20 years. and studied fashion design there as well.

The painter Gustav Klimt is one of your inspirations. Can you share more about your artistic process?

I find myself to be more undone and enraptured by Klimt鈥檚 pieces than by looking at flowers or a tree. I enjoy being inspired by other techniques and styles. There鈥檚 something about being immersed, looking at all the angles, getting to know something inside out. I know why Klimt put the yellow there. I鈥檓 exploring how deeply can I know this. I want to know this completely until it鈥檚 in my cells. I鈥檓 creating beauty because I鈥檓 trying to make myself: if I鈥檓 making beauty, I鈥檓 identifying myself with beauty.

I鈥檝e also created originals when inspiration comes to me, for example, my collection on Earned Attachment, collages that depict a father or mother holding a child. I didn鈥檛 have the language at the time to explain it. It took a few years later, when I was at this school and then I understood it: I was unconsciously trying to heal, trying to create attachment with the Godhead.

In my art, I connect to parts of myself, my unconscious, that need to be healed or processed. I have been surprised by what came out at the end in my art: God and I were co-creating. I鈥檓 coming to trust that there鈥檚 a purpose here, just go with it.

Often my art is an act of worship, to love, to beauty, to healing, to God. A way to extol. Some of the collage pieces are pieces of worship to someone I love, a moment in time that had a lot of meaning. Holding it up to the light and sharing it with others even though it鈥檚 not translatable. This was glory. That person was glory.

How did you evolve as an artist during graduate school?

Over the four years at 天美视频, it took me most of the time to own the name 鈥渁rtist鈥�. It didn鈥檛 sit in my body yet. That changed while I was in school.聽

I love how 天美视频 gave me words. I have a drive to express myself through poetry, art, and papers for school on topics I鈥檓 passionate about. Graduate school helped me find words for what I鈥檓 trying to express in my right brain and didn鈥檛 have words for. I feel like it did a lot of the work of integration. Getting the words and getting the awareness that came in school came together well with my art.聽

What drew you to the Master of Arts in Theology and Culture at 天美视频?

When I came to the school, I knew I had things to say to the world. It kept getting bigger and bigger. I wanted direction and guidance, to know what that was.聽

How did graduate school shape who you are today?

I鈥檓 now working as a program therapist in shelters with traumatized women. At 天美视频,聽 I took all the psychology classes I could. I loved the mix. It was perfect for me. I didn鈥檛 want the limitations of licensure. I love people and I want to be in trauma spaces with people. I want to live with people and heal together. I want to speak to people where they are at. It鈥檚 worth it if I can speak to their shame, a sentence, a look, a touch. I think everyone needs someone to look them in the eye. Before 天美视频, I would have amazing connections with people in 30 seconds. That impact matters to me. Now I know what鈥檚 happening, how significant it is, the neuropsychology, and I love all of it.聽

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As I sat down to write a Harry Potter fanfiction for class this past term, I drew both on my experiences reading the seven canonical novels as well as my engagement with the best fanfiction that I鈥檝e read. I was reminded of how developed my own imagination was at 12 when I started reading fanfiction and writing some of my own; this began right after the book series ended, when I feared a loss of mystery and discovery in the secondary world that helped me make sense of my own experiences more than any other fiction work had before. In the hundreds of new stories that I devoured then, these writers suggested that the discovery journey was just beginning.

The onset of my fanfiction engagement coincided with great turmoil in key relationships. For a number of reasons, I became disenchanted with my own life and felt more like a stranger in many of the circles I occupied. Here, fanfiction in the Wizarding World was a healing balm for me. In a beautiful reversal, the stage became my life, and I could act out my adolescent frustrations and fears. Before I had the language to detail the grief and disorientation of personal trauma, I could lead the wizards and witches in my story to engage pain on my behalf.

Seeing their ability to persist in the face of mortal peril and acknowledging that their success was at my demand as their creator, I learned to consider my own power to do the same in my own life. Harry Potter offers a unique sense of agency here. The richness of its world makes the story as accessible for a young child as it is for any adult. The characters of Harry Potter are people to meet and know well, and fanfiction in the world of Harry Potter allows a writer to be themselves alongside original inhabitants, just transported to a new magical country. I didn鈥檛 naively assume that my influence stretched very far past the page; I was still 12 and still unsure of my place in the world. Rather, I noticed that my ability to hope and imagine could endure in the face of a world that seemed to indicate that the exact opposite was true. Not only that, but I could also create hope in another, even if that other was a fiction from my own head. I credit the nameless authors whose work inspired me to become a co-creator in my own life story. I consider them collaborators in my personal world as much as that of the Wizarding World.

Fanfiction can even synthesize micro-zeitgeists that those close to a secondary world share deeply. For those who want to imagine redemption for evil, there are stories detailing Voldemort鈥檚 ownership of his wrongdoing and subsequent penance, while others allow Draco Malfoy to overcome his cowardice to become the man that we all hoped he could be. For those who are used to being relegated to the background of their own lives, Colin Creevey tales represent a centering of any unexpected and unnoticed voice. Indeed, fanfiction can enable representation in areas where it is currently missing.

As beloved as J.K. Rowling鈥檚 created world is, it is often lambasted for its lack of effective diversity of characters. Everyone, primary to tertiary, is a straight, cisgender, White person, with the occasional, heavy-handedly written BIPOC. Even in these few instances of representation, we see nothing meaningful in Cho Chang鈥檚 Asian heritage or Dean Thomas鈥� Blackness. Our only known queer characters were identified after the series鈥� publication and still remain defined only by the tragedy in their stories. They all read as stand-ins to satisfy a white gaze, or to comfort heteronormativity without disrupting the typical world order. Fanfiction reimagines stories like these through subversion, where Hermione isn鈥檛 white, Ron isn鈥檛 straight, and our Wizarding community migrates from the mountains of Scotland. Imagination here becomes a recursive phenomenon; as new ideas are generated, they encourage and produce other novel stories, which invite more readers to create their own as well, all in the same shared secondary world. This is the 鈥渇irst fruits鈥� of any liberative work, where people need to see themselves living rich and full lives before creating them; they can rehearse fostering hope in the safety of a fictional secondary world before returning to our primary world to put it to practice.

Far from being the immature musings of uninspired fans, fanfiction invites readers to consider themselves as co-creators in their spiritual stories rather than consumers or spectators. For children and adults alike, it offers a chance to create a world within a world, to break and make rules of engagement, and to prepare the courage they need to confront despair and anguish in their own lives. A rich tool for capturing goodness and injecting often anemic hope with vitality, fanfiction asks us to hope that our primary world, the personal and the communal, might one day be just as magical.

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