by Bahi’chi Castañeda
Htet Htet Soe (they/them/theirs) is a multimedia artist and student at Evergreen. They use art as a way to explore self and experiences of identity, decolonization, and healing.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. What does it mean to be Htet Htet Soe?
Names are complicated! Htet Htet Soe is the name given to me, and I say given because I don’t have much else to hold on to, culture-wise. It’s something I hold very close to me because it’s one of the things that I was given and can hold on to. I went by the name Teddy for the last five or six years, but now only reserve it for close friends of mine, other BIPOC. I realise that a bit of it was white-washing my name, for the comfort of others as well as myself. Part of it, too, was the belief that when you’re trans, you have a “dead name” and a “chosen name” , but I think it’s a lot more complicated than that and I think it’s a very American way of thinking about transness or gender. I’m still processing what it means for me, and being trans, while also having a given name that white people refuse to pronounce right. But I have no problem forcing people to choke on my syllables, when I’ve spent an entire life learning and speaking a language not native to my tongue. When I went back to referring to myself as the name I was given, I spent an entire year here in Olympia struggling to try and find work. On a whim one night, I applied to jobs as Teddy and received multiple calls back the very next day… So at work, I guess I’m Teddy.
I grew up in North Portland surrounded by other immigrants and refugees in a predominantly Black and brown neighbourhood. I transferred to Evergreen from Portland State University and came in as a sophomore. This year will be my third or fourth year here. Both at PSU and here at Evergreen, I studied ethnic studies and art.
The practice of art for me is a way of exploring self, a way of processing emotions, a way of decolonizing, and a way of healing. I convey different themes of my identity, as well as my experiences of my identity, through my work.
What kind of artistic mediums do you use, and how did you get involved with those mediums?
I feel like I use whatever I feel like using in the moment, if that makes sense? Acrylic paint, fibers, ceramics, newspaper, collage, charcoal, chalk pastels — I consider myself multimedia, really. I don’t usually plan a lot of things out. Lately, I’ve just been sticking to ink and layering line art because it’s more accessible to me than charcoal or ceramics. I think I started experimenting with different mediums at Portland State. Portland State taught me how to love charcoal, and Evergreen taught me how to love ceramics.
What does the artistic process look like for you? Can you walk me through the steps you take when creating a piece?
When it comes to technique, I am experimental. I do this with drawing techniques and combining methods, intricately implementing it into my art in unconventional ways. My use of layering one-line contours and colors are intentional in a way representative of how I view things as connected, and related to one another. It’s messy. I’m an overthinker and my anxiety fills my mind with worries that seem to be placed on top of one another. I think I start with one medium, and that’s a layer and then I go over it again with another medium.
My experimentation has followed into the creation of 3D projects as I get familiar with ceramics. I make a lot of my art when I’m mad and hurt. I have so much to say about so many things all the time, and with practice, I continue to find new ways to heal through art. I feel like I am capable of more than what I am used to seeing for myself.
A lot of your art centers on identity. If you feel comfortable, can you share a little bit about how your identity as a queer non-binary femme of color has influenced your art or shaped you as an artist?
I feel like because a lot of my art is me trying to process the world around me, that my identity is inherently tied to that. I wouldn’t be able to explore myself without trying to express it. Finding connections between my experiences and identities, I struggle to navigate a world that systematically denies me the right to fully understand myself or be who I am — that was kind of taken away from me, through colonization. I don’t have the access or the resources or the knowledge to really know who I am, because I come into this world and there’s already a bunch of labels put on me before I even know who I am or what those labels mean, so how do you identify with something that was made to differentiate you? I’m Asian, but what does Asian mean, right? I don’t really identify with “Asian-American”, because I’m Southeast Asian and I think it’s very, very specific because there’s no regional representation and there’s a history behind that. Like, I am a refugee and I had to flee my country from war, right, and that’s different than being able to make the choice to come here.
After taking my first studio project class here at Evergreen, I decided that I was never doing that again. I’ve never cried in a class so much. Being in a predominantly white studio class with professors who kept being racist, at a predominantly white school, in a predominantly white town is traumatising. I’m fucking tired of how fucking exhausting and racist art in higher academia is.
Any last comments or anything you’d like to talk about/share that we haven’t already touched on?
English is not my first language, don’t come for me if I spell things wrong in my art!
You can check out more of Htet Htet’s work on their Instagram (@lilsleepypoo).
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