“Rauchen ist Toedlich” for Party Forever, 2017
不言, or as I lay my yellow head against the cutting board I am delirious against the silence.
album cover for @talmirage. 2022
body paint, digital collage. 2022.
Model: @hunnyb3ee
It started when my father named me after a poem.
“桃李不言 /下自成蹊.”
“Peach trees and plum trees are silent, but lines form beneath them.”
In the first line, our surname 李, “plum” precedes “不言”, “silent” — or, when translated character by character from Chinese into English,“no speech”. As an homage to some warrior of the Spring-Autumn period, B wanted quiet integrity for his firstborn. So I was Li Bu Yen.
No Speech Li.
But for the times it tastes of poison, there’s nothing more pernicious than silence. Silence is resignation, passivity; the most insulting kind of complicity because it’s rooted in inaction — in not caring, or worse, in the choice to look away. My aunts saw this too: when they heard over the phone what their baby brother had called their niece, they erupted in protest, white static crackling across the oceans between Pennsylvania and Beijing, “You can’t name a girl that! Speechless Li. Mute Li. Silent Li. Naming her that’s like child abuse. Think ahead seven years to the bullies at school! Give her a real name.” Instead, they called me 冬瑶 because I was born past the tail of November — “Dong Yao”, Stone of the Winter” Li ,冬冬 for short. But it was too late: 李不言 was on my birth certificate. I was already Buyan Li, “Booyen” Li; or eventually “Boo - yawn Leee”, for every time it tripped off another substitute teacher’s tongue.
What’s truly in a name? Something certainly more powerful than a rose that smells as sweet; for at the time I first met A I had already become CC. And by then, she’d already swallowed a silence like methadone — like swallowing whole pieces of the orange sky — complicit in her own demise.
(9/9/2020, San Francisco)
two artists together apart, CC & June conjoin their work and souls in the hopes of birthing a persona anew. phase change: blue moon represents the amalgam of two femme bodies colliding in time & space, aiming to transform and transcend their previous existences. join us in our journey of turning two into one.
sold on Foundation.
body paint, self portrait photo, digital collage. 2021
models: @play_w_cc & @tigerrabbittiger
blue tissue paper, self portrait photography, body paint, poem written during covid self isolation isolation. 2022
self portrait, digital collage, pink body paint. 2019
collect it on: Foundation https://foundation.app/@play_w_cc/foundation/130453
up past the northern lights, the tiger chases the golden ox. bounding through firmament in the wake of bovine's tail, she leaps towards the final days of lunar 2021. her coat draws synodic arcs across the sky, painting it diaphanous with streaks of orange and red.
far below, on a rooftop in oakland, water churns beneath the last full moon of the year. self collides with self in a chorus of paper waves — a tessellation of howling moonsong, of flesh and blue and painted limbs.
“phase change: tidesong” is the final piece of a 3-part visual poem from CC & Juni.
minted by the light of the wolf moon in january — the last full moon of the year of the ox — it beckons the tiger's arrival as a year of change and transformation.
instagram:
@play_w_cc & @tigerrabbittiger
twitter:
@play_w_cc & @tygrpuppy
medium:
blue body paint, poster paper, self-portrait photography, digital assemblage.
models from left to right: CC, Juni
self portrait, digital collage, pink body paint. 2019
who is there to hide
behind these finger - length streaks
of compressed atmosphere ?
2022
face paint, digital self portrait photo.
Models from left to right: @naz.lebeurre and CC
for source zero (@sourcezero1 on soundcloud and instagram). self portrait, digital collage, body paint.
‘it’s like the sky grew arms’
{body paint, poster paper, self-portrait photography, digital assemblage}
how do you measure the space between selves? 'it’s like the sky grew arms' comes second in a series by CC & Juni. this digital self-portrait assemblage combines our two figures in the daytime afterglow, through a prism of skin and sky and parts diffusing. floating in and out, they fracture and recombine. CC’s identity as a nonbinary femme embraces Juni’s trans femininity in a caress of contrast. their conjoined form stands tall, as if cut from void, in the halo of a backdrop both unreal, and surreal — effervescent, technicolor, vaporized. so where does the spirit congeal? 'phase change: it’s like the sky grew arms' is a statement of singularity; of everything & nothing.
instagram:
@play_w_cc & @tigerrabbittiger
twitter:
@play_w_cc & @tygrpuppy
self portrait, digital collage, pink body paint. 2019
life size constructed “notebook paper” (7’ x 10’), body paint, digital collage. assembled at the beginning of covid. 2020.
stills from “Mukbang” stop motion.
Self portrait photography, print, decoupage.
Images from solo exhibition, Patterson Gallery, November 2017.
Kay Smith for Derby Hotels, Barcelona.
Al for VALLEY Magazine street style editorial. 2017
naima (@naz.lebeurre) and stacy for Payam Air @payamair.
your lie in (model:) April, 2017.
cat (@etherealramen) at dusk, wearing @payamair.
Kay Smith for Derby Hotels, Barcelona. 2021
self portraits taken in Northern California for Jenn Ardor (@jennardor_official). 2019
for Cristy Namasteja. Edited and directed by me.
alajha (@mystic_creatrix) in 2021.
Kay Smith for Posh and Pearls (@posh_pearls)
VALLEY Magazine, Spring 2018
Cayman (@caymanvanderbur) for VALLEY Magazine’s beauty spread, spring 2018.
april, 2017.
pre-2016.
starring:
VALLEY Magazine cover spread, 2017
