More than a thousand portraits of people who identify as part Asian were shot, from the collarbone up, in front of a white background.
They look naked — no jewelry, no expression, with each man, woman and child accompanied by a handwritten backstory about who they are. It’s part of a project spotlighting various expressions of mixed identities.
The Hapa Project or Hapa.Me, a popular touring exhibit exploring multi-racial Asian-Pacific Islander identity, has made its way to the Morikami Museum and Japanese Garden in Delray Beach and will be on display until fall.
Hapa is a Native Hawaiian word that translates to "part" or "half." In the project, one girl writes underneath her portrait: "My mom is Thai, Lao and Cambodian. My dad is Scottish, Irish and English. I am ME!!”
In a separate photo, a man writes: “I am Japanese. I am American. Completely both. I rejoice in my heritage. Happy Happy Hapa”
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Artist, author and photographer Kip Fulbeck, who is of mixed European, Chinese and Southeast Asian ancestry, says his project explores why “identity is always fluid and there's an internal and an external identity — the ones that you project, and the ones that are placed upon you.”
The Hapa.Me exhibit is accompanied by a published book with the same title. The neutral-colored photographs mimic public identification cards like driver's licenses or store cards. In them, participants hand wrote a response to Fulbeck's question: “Who are you?”
Fulbeck said he produced the project because, like many Hapa kids, public representations about their personal experiences were slim to none.
“I grew up in an entirely Chinese household — immigrant Chinese from China. I'm the only Hapa kid,” Fullbeck told WLRN. He said he felt like he didn’t have a cultural footing. “As a kid, I felt I was the white kid. I don't speak the language. I don't like the food. I don't get the culture, whatever,” he added.
“And then I go to school and I'm the only Asian kid at school. And it's a completely different thing.”
He said, like many Hapa kids, it was a task to define oneself within the racial and cultural in-betweenness. “You never got to be embarrassed for who you are or trying to be able to assert who you are or say who you are," he said. "If you don't define yourself, someone else defines you and they do it wrong.”
'We are mixed in this community'
The Asian population in Palm Beach County is just 3%. For Miami-Dade County, it hovers just under two percent, compared to 70% for the Hispanic population, according to Census data.
Wendy Lo, Morikami’s curator of education, told WLRN she resonated with the project because, when she was younger, she often tried to find where she fits in South Florida. Lo, who was born and raised in Miami, was often one of the few Chinese girls in Hialeah, which has a large Hispanic community.
Exploring one's complex identity is “a journey that we all have to go through,” Lo said.
“We are mixed in this community. You may not realize your neighbor may be part Asian, part British, part African, part, you know, you just don't know. That conversation is very important to really build those bonds with each other.”
Lo said Carla Stansifer, Morikami's curator of Japanese art, was instrumental in putting the exhibit together with her team.
The Hapa Project, originally launched in 2001, premiered at the Japanese American National Museum five years later. Now, 15 years later, the exhibit at the Morikami places an emphasis on nearly 50 participants from the first project. The exhibit also includes then-and-now portraits and newly written responses to the identity question.
Fulbeck said he recognizes that May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, but the project is "about identity, first and foremost.”
“So there's people in there like, maybe they're Black, White, Native mixes,” Fulbeck said. “And that's not my version of HAPA, but it's not my place to tell you who you are. It's up to you. So I always said, you want to be part of it? Be part of it.”
IF YOU GO
Hapa Me
WHEN: Through August 25, 2024
WHERE: Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
For more information, visit Morikami
