Anna Cai

SAIC SHOWS 2022 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Graduates

SAIC SHOWS 2022 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Visual Communication Design (Graphic Design)

annacaiartcom.wordpress.com

Anna Cai (they/them) is an Asian American designer who tells stories that explore identity through costume design, performance art, film, graphic design, and print media. They earned their BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia in 2016, and shortly after, relocated to Lesotho where they served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2016-2018. They continued working in Lesotho at the intersection of community activism and art until 2020 when they returned to the U.S. At the center of their practice is a desire to steer their community into a future that embraces no nations, gender, or currency.

Molting, Still 3, 2022, Performance with Yao Song, video projection, hair clippers, and chair

Molting, Still 12, 2022, Performance with Yao Song, video projection, hair clippers, and chair

Interview with Hugo, Still 5, 2022, Conversation with Hugo Ivan Juarez, hair clippers, and chair

Interview with Hugo Still 4, 2022, Conversation with Hugo Ivan Juarez, hair clippers, and chair

Interview with Hugo, Still 9, 2022, Conversation with Hugo Ivan Juarez, hair clippers, and chair

Transcriptions, 2021, Performance, butcher paper, and oral history

Transcriptions is a performance about the process of recording oral history. It is from a conversation I recorded between myself and a close friend from an older generation of Chinese American folks in my hometown. I am transcribing their oral history onto paper through a series of folds and crunches. When the speaker expresses their thoughts and recollections smoothly, I fold. Whenever the speaker stumbles, I crunch the paper, and continue grabbing at the roll of paper until the speech is expressed fluidly again. This form of transcription documents the difficulty experienced in both the process of speaking about one’s personal history and the process of recording it.

The Chinese Time Traveling Carp, 2021, Performance, newsprint, fortune cookies, inflatable pool, incense, fruit, and altar

This is a ritual about performative displays of cultural symbolism. I embody a Chinese carp that has traveled from the Yellow River of ancient China to the muddy banks of the Mississippi River in the year 1930. I perform a spectacular one-fish show in which I entrance the audience with a mystical ceremony of fortune-telling. It is an embrace of the improvisational nature of my experience as a child of immigrants in the U.S., attempting to prove my understanding of my parents’ countries.

Thandi Cai (they/them) is a queer Indonesian Chinese American designer from Memphis, Tennessee who explores storytelling and topics on identity through relationships, textiles, costume, performance art, film, graphic design, and print media. At the center of their interdisciplinary practice is a desire to steer their community into a future that embraces no nations, gender, or currency.

Cai has received multiple awards for their work in art, design and community engagement. Most recently they were a recipient of the 2020 New Artist Society scholarship, the 2022 Caxton Book Club grant, and Graphic Design USA’s 2022 Students to Watch Award. They have collaborated with several organizations internationally including the Morija Arts Centre, The Hub in Morija, Lesotho Girls in Tech, the Public Housing Authority of Residents in Charlottesville, the White House Kitchen Garden initiative, and the Chinese Historical Society of Memphis and the Midsouth. They have initiated numerous independent publications and initiatives such as The Morija Makers (2018), Stories from Westhaven (2016), and the upcoming Chicago-based independent magazine Tongues (2022).

They received a BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia. In 2016 to 2018 they served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. During this time, they gained invaluable experience on how to build trusting relationships and engage in acts of service through art-making to fully embrace an art practice at the intersection of community building, education, and design. They are currently enrolled in the MFA Visual Communication program at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago where they are immersed in rituals that combine pleasure, play, historical fabulation[1], and the reclaiming of archives.

[1] The term “critical fabulation” signifies a writing methodology that combines historical and archival research with critical theory and fictional narrative. Critical fabulation is a tool that Hartman uses in her scholarly practice to make productive sense of the gaps and silences in the archive of trans-Atlantic slavery that absent the voices of enslaved women. [Wikipedia]

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