View the Big City Lights Website.

‘Mixed Emotions (Portrait of Lisa and Ruby)’ captures moving image portraits of people within the Asian diaspora. Constructed using cultural artefacts belonging to the subjects, the work reveals individual stories defined by growing up mixed race in South East Queensland, and unites connections and crossovers of culture for second generation Asian Australians. Slow-moving video and still photography capture Lisa Tran Kelly in her mother’s Ao Dai dress dancing with a lotus flower symbolic of Vietnamese culture. Incense smoke drifts out of earthy pots and jade coloured jewellery pays homage to Ruby Yu-Lu Yeh’s Taiwanese heritage. 

‘Mixed Emotions (Portrait of Lisa and Ruby)’  was screened outdoors in July 2022 at Big City Lights Festival on the Gold Coast, curated by Rosie Dennis. The work consisted of a short 3min excerpt, presented as an outdoor 4K video projection.

This project is supported by GENERATE GC, a City of Gold Coast initiative delivered in collaboration with Tasdance and SITUATE Art in Festivals. 

The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government and the City of Gold Coast Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.