Berkeley Undergraduate Journal

Through the interview of four East-Asian American women artists of diverse backgrounds, alongside semiotic analysis of their selected works, I investigate their oppositional digital art practice as well as their general online experiences. The digital sphere replicates the same forms of racially and sexually based oppression that occurs in the non-digital world in rapidly diverging forms. The main findings demonstrate that digital technologies offer novel ways for East-Asian American artists to resist oppression, visibilize their struggles, and explore their identities. Oppositional techniques can be sorted into three broad categories describing the archival, discursive, and voyeuristic capabilities of digital space. These categories describe a broad range of practices including generating alternative autobiographical histories, forging larger communities of resistance, and subverting the white male gaze. East-Asian American women artists actively challenge structural power through innovative multimedia methodologies that challenge mainstream representations in which they are regarded as subhuman, and resist essentialized roles and fixed markers of East-Asian culture and identity. Their diverse experiences converge upon the common goal of resisting hegemonic order and fostering a supportive space in which the voices of their community can be heard. Drawing on movements like postcolonial feminist scholarship from Anne Anlin Cheng, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Saidiya Hartman, as well as Third Cinema, I argue that social media sites and other internet communities expand and enable the development of a digital postcolonial aesthetic and art practice for East-Asian American women artists, allowing them to exercise agency over their artistic and historical narratives.