100% Mixed Race

Elisha Lim

A Space Windows

January 20 – March 3, 2012

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One Hundred Percent is about what it means to be mixed. It is a collaboration with my sister, critical race theorist and writer Thea Lim. The project focuses on the inextricable intersection of race and sexuality. For these models, being queer is not aside from being mixed race. It is one of the many lenses of the telescope through which they are scrutinized when they’re asked, again and again, "What are you?"

My artwork celebrates and documents marginal identities. I’m obsessed with the power of art to turn disenfranchised communities into alluring, provocative, proud, and powerful portraits. I try to achieve this by illustrating unpretentious, vulnerable stories, focusing on the subjects’ own opinions and words. I work with realistic portraits often accompanied by anecdotes or captions. Each project has a specific provocative theme inspired by my subcultures, in order to inspire and attract models, collaborators and conversation. The lead image was also commissioned for Jin Haritaworn’s forthcoming book on Thai mixed race in Britain and Germany.

Biographies

Elisha Lim created “100 Butches”, a genderbending comic introduced by Alison Bechdel and praised by Shary Boyle and Allyson Mitchell. It earned two major grants and toured with the legendary Sister Spit caravan, and will be launched in January 2012 with Magnus Books, New York. In 2010 Elisha screened work at the AGO and Armory Arts Week, and in 2011 at the bodacious indie gallery FAG, and in Montréal, Philadelphia and Toronto. Elisha’s current project SISSY is proudly part of Bitch Magazine’s top 9 feminist products.