The Artist Currently Known As: Angel Tan
Angel is a drag artist, musician and writer. They perform under the name Fine China and just contributed to the independent marginal zine, stocked at The Bookshop Darlinghurst.
You recently graduated. What were you studying? Contemporary music.
How did you find it? The first two years were amazing. I found third year a bit repetitive. I took a gap year, and then I came back for honours, and that was chaos. It was a very isolating experience – you’re working on your own project by yourself, and that was definitely challenging.
Apart from music, you’re doing so many different things at the moment. Can you tell me what you like to make? I think I like to make things – this is going to sound so conceited – I think I like to make things about me. We need more BIPOC trans and queer artists in the world. It’s so important in decentralising whiteness and uplifting diverse communities.
Honestly, that class that we took — representing race and gender! Gender studies plug! Taking that class was a lightbulb moment for me. That class actually introduced me to the word ‘intersectionality.’ It’s so weird, I’ve gone through all my life… like, okay, yeah, I’m Chinese, I’m queer… I’ve never really considered that they could relate to each other. And I was like, oh, I can make art about me! I worked on a zine marginalwith a bunch of people.
I was going to ask you about the zine! Could you tell me about that? It was phenomenal. The person who facilitated it, Kae, we actually went to high school together; they were in the year above and I thought they were just the coolest person ever. We bumped into each other at Usyd and they put out an expression of interest for trans creators to get together. It was the first time I've ever done anything like this.
Do you mean that it was a trans space? Or writing, or a zine? It’s the first time I’ve put myself out there to create collaboratively, because uni made me nervous to do that. With marginal we worked on our own thing and then came together. The idea was that we would annotate in the margins — we could respond to the piece, or just doodle, as you would with anything.
What did you write about? It was during the class we were taking. I was like, you know what, I’m just going to title it with all my identities. Okay: what am I? Queer, transmasc, butch, dyke, Chinese, and I’ll just throw it all together. And I don’t know why I chose to go for a manifesto. I was just feeling myself, I guess. The events that were happening during that time, I was feeling really empowered and also angry, but also happy because of my community.
I wanted to ask you about drag. How long have you been performing? Since last February, so almost two years.
How do you feel when you’re performing? I feel so great. I love performing. It’s such an insane feeling to be on stage and expressing yourself through your body, the music. In everyday life, I'm usually very quiet. But internally I'm like, eurghh!!! I’m a gremlin jumping everywhere. Being onstage, I get to do that. It’s this insane feeling of release. As much as I'm receiving a lot from it, I'm giving a lot to other people too.
I guess too, presumably everyone watching is part of the community. So I imagine it would almost be a feedback loop, it echoes. It really is.
Has drag affected how you feel and think about gender more broadly? Yeah, I think so. One of the biggest issues I've had to grapple with is coming to terms with Asian masculinity. Because they’re so feminised by Western media, I've had a difficult time being like, I am masculine. Doing drag helped. You’re going to see a drag king, so you go, okay — masculine. I don’t feel I have to work very hard to have people perceive me as masculine. It's funny; you do drag, you create this persona, and the two start blurring together. I’ve reached a point where I'm perfectly content. I don’t need validation from other people, especially white people.
I don’t know if you saw, over the weekend, this performative masc competition? I was at work! I walked into the office, and my friend said, are you going to the performative masc lesbian competition? Everyone was like, you should just go. Leave!
From what I can see, [for the performers] it’s a very genuine expression of themselves. Obviously it started out being about male performativity about feminism. I can't really tell if this is sending up mascness and butchness, if it’s taking the piss out of it, or criticising it. I can’t tell! What are your thoughts?
It's interesting that you’ve said that. I want to think that it's performing in the positive sense, and definitely taking the piss out of it, and also uplifting these people. Maybe ‘stereotypical’ masc lesbian is more accurate for this event. I guess gender is performative. Especially with butchness, from my perspective, I perform the roles of taking care and chivalry.
I know the person who won. Star’s a drag creature – not necessarily king or queen, but in between. They dip in and out of being really masc and being really fem.
And they performed masc the best! And they won!
I’ve been thinking about the discussion of, can you talk about sexuality without talking about gender? And if we’re talking about gender in the way that we have – that it’s performative – then what does that mean?
I actually can’t wrap my head around talking about sexuality without talking about gender. When I came out as non-binary, there was confusion, cause it was like, who are you attracted to? Even though gender and sexuality are separate. I went through a moment of, these labels are really restrictive, I don’t want to do that any more. And [my partner] was like, that’s silly, labels are really important. They can be restrictive, but they don’t have to be, especially with our generation.
What are your favourite queer spots around Sydney? The Bearded Tit, for one. RIP. Performing at The Imperial was such an honour, but it’s so loud there. White Rabbit gallery. It’s really just Bearded Tit. Poor Bearded Tit! Poor Bearded Tit.
You can find Angel at @vivusxa and @kingfinechina.