Ming Ying Hong

Region: South

City / State: Starkville, MS

My work explores my own hybridized body, examining the way society defines, categorizes, and assigns power to it. I am a southerner, a Chinese American, and an immigrant. All these identifiers often clash with one another, creating an internalized hierarchy that leads to a precarious sense of self. These drawings investigate how food and other cultural phenomena are a site of collision for these identities. More precisely, the work investigates how these objects and events are a vehicle for both assimilation and alienation in the South. Ultimately, the work questions what it means to assimilate: is it about blending in, becoming more visible, or something in between?