“The biggest difficulty of being a POC artist is fear,” fourth-year UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) student Lila Velasquez Singh says. “There’s always doubt, I think, as an artist, but when you have a marginalized identity, you’re constantly asking yourself: Is anything I make worth anything?” 

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Lila, who identifies as Indian-American, is one of a small but influential number of Asian-American artists at UCSB. The school possesses a strong artistic tradition; its Film and Media Studies department is regularly ranked among the best in the country, students from its College of Creative Studies are often published as undergraduates, and numerous literary magazines and artistic collectives make up a thriving creative scene. But just as they are minorities within the greater university, so too are Asian-American students minorities within artistic spaces. For them, creating work grounded in their identity can often empower them to connect with their roots. But the university’s reluctance to create inclusive spaces for Asian-American art can often limit their opportunities. 

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It’s a common adage in Asian-American communities that the best way to disappoint your parents is to become an artist. For children of what are frequently first or second-generation immigrants, the risks associated with a life in the arts often seem to outweigh the benefits: a 2016 report by the American Council of Education found that just 4.3 percent of Asian American students major in the humanities, compared to over 40 percent who choose to major in STEM. It’s a sentiment that third-year Writing and Literature student Matthew Choi agrees with. 

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“I think [pursuing art] is definitely more frowned upon in Asian cultures,” Choi, who was born in Korea, says. “It’s like, Our family came here with nothing and worked so hard to be financially secure. Why would you throw that away for a career that makes no money, instead being a doctor?” 

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Choi’s work often focuses on aspects of his heritage; his senior thesis is a collection of short stories that retell traditional Korean folk tales. One story, “The Tigress” is an inversion of a story in which a tiger devours a mother in a small village. In another, “Snake Baby”, the protagonist drinks a bottle of “snake wine” – rice wine infused with an entire dead snake – which then comes to life in her belly. Choi says that fiction helps him better reflect on his family history and culture. But he says he’s wary of making his heritage his entire identity as an artist. 

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“I’m always concerned that I’m verging on pretending I’m monolithic, so a lot of times I try to reel it back and make my narrator more distinct,” he says. 

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The risk of tokenizing oneself for a predominantly white audience is a common issue amongst Asian American artists – especially at UCSB, where white students make up the majority. 

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“I definitely feel pressure to cater to the white gaze,” says Resh Grewal, a fourth-year student and Raab Writing fellow. Her memoir, Frozen Sunflowers and Tangled Vines, chronicles her journey from the slums of India to trauma and oppression in America. She says that her minority status has sometimes made it difficult for her ideas to be translated correctly.

 

“I’ve had white readers criticize my work because they just don’t understand concepts, and it’s difficult to advocate for myself in those situations,” she says. “It feels sometimes like I have to choose between my two identities [Indian and American], which is exhausting.” 

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For other artists, the fraughtness of identity makes them reluctant to address race in their work. Velasquez Singh, who has both Latino and Indian heritage, says that she doesn’t often bring culture into her work. 

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“I never fully felt like I belonged to any single racial experience, growing up,” she says. “I come from a town where the number of Asian American students [at my high school] was in the single digits, so I grew up kinda estranged from my own ethnic heritage. So I never felt like I had the authority to talk about cultural experience [in my writing]. But I do feel the pressure.” 

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UCSB does have programs that attempt to showcase minority artists on campus — the Multicultural Center, for example, which was founded in 1989 as a result of a twelve-day hunger strike by students, often has events that feature Asian-American artists.

 

But many find the university’s support of Asian-American artists to be lacking. 

“There’s a lot the university tries to do on the surface level but those resources, events, [and] organizations don’t usually address the base issues,” says Grewal.

 

“Taking in more student feedback and giving more funding to the students and departments that try to support marginalized groups would go a long way.”