Fei Gao is an emerging artist based in Dharug Country/Western Sydney. He was among eleven artists awarded a residency this year with the Queer Development Program (QDP), an initiative by Performance Space and PACT Centre for Emerging Artists in Eora/Sydney. The program has become an incubator for some of Australia’s most compelling queer talent, connecting artists with an intergenerational community of queer makers and mentors, culminating in an annual QDP Showcase. This year’s cohort brought forth an array of works that, in their variety and ambition, are a testament to the program’s impact.

Amidst a roster of exceptional talent, Fei’s presentation stood out as the clear showstopper. His performance piece, titled The Red Bean, was a tender and elegantly choreographed drag rendition of Faye Wong’s love ballad of the same name. Dressed head to toe in a dazzling custom-made costume, like an extravagant video game avatar, Fei embodied the humble red bean, recasting it as an elaborate contemporary deity – and in doing so, elevated himself to the same status. At the end of his performance, the room was on its feet, many of the audience members visibly moved. In his own words, “the red bean symbolises the sweat and tears one sheds for a lover – something sweet that can also become bitter if not cooked right”.

The Red Bean builds upon Fei’s sustained engagement with intimate histories of migration, queerness, and love, which he gives life to through a digital vocabulary; leveraging digital technology’s dual capacity as both medium and metaphor for networked transformation. Fei draws particular inspiration from video games – their immersive world-building, rich character design, and potential for interactivity. While video games are often dismissed as trivial or mere escapism, Fei’s work challenges these notions, presenting them as powerful tools for self-reflection which offer modern-day allegories of enduring collective concerns and experiences.

For Fei, video games are fundamental to his generation's development, a virtual space where radical hybridity, playfulness, and problem-solving can flourish – an attitude that is increasingly shaping the ‘real world’. By bringing the virtual into the physical space of the gallery and stage, Fei guides us toward the next frontier of creative expression. Through experimentation and innovation, he transmutes personal pain and heartbreak into contemporary memoir, offering us an intimate view into his journey of healing, connection and renewal.

Fei Gao
The Red Bean
2024
© Joseph Mayers

In conversation with Fei Gao


JSG: Fei, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed for this edition of Barbara Journal. I want to begin by asking you to introduce yourself - how did you become an artist?


FG: Thank you so much Jules! I started when I became obsessed with reading Manga in High School. I was reading a lot of Bleach and wanted to learn how to draw like that. I went to take classes from a teacher to go through the technical side of figurative drawing. Like, you know, the cube, sphere, shadow, lighting. Then I just started tracing characters from Bleach, FullMetal Alchemist, and One Piece. I wanted to be a Manga/Comic Artist in the beginning. I really like narratives, characters, and environments.

It wasn’t until Uni that I started learning and exploring conceptual Art. I was experimenting with more materials and forms. I also started dancing with the Dance societies at Uni. I think these are my first performance experiences. We would play music and freestyle battle each other. It was some fun times.


JSG: Your work often focuses on personal experiences relating to love, childhood, and migration. Do you see a connection between these themes, and what keeps you returning to them?


FG: Wow thanks for asking this as it actually helps me to think about my practice. I feel like I do really enjoy exploring different themes and materials. But I feel like there’s some underlying thread that ties them together?

I think separation, loneliness, alienation and the desire for community, relationships and connection are very central to themes around dating, queerness, migration, gaming, and childhood trauma. I feel like I have become more and more introspective and aware of my experience going through Complex PTSD growing up. And I feel like going to therapy and trying to heal has become such a central part of my life. And to make sense of these experiences and feel those feelings is what I want to do in my practice.

I feel like at the moment I’m interested in feelings and emotional work haha.


JSG: Can you talk about your new work The Red Bean presented at the Queer Development Showcase. What inspired this piece?


FG: I began to think about this piece in lockdown, I was just listening to Faye Wong’s song and in my head popped up this character in a red bean can dancing and expressing their affection. I guess having romantic fantasies and wanting to connect with someone helped me through such isolated times.

I feel like when I’m really feeling something and vibing with certain songs and music there is someone dressed up in crazy outfits dancing in my head haha. A lot of this really comes from being a huge Lady Gaga fan as a kid. And also watching a lot of Kamen Rider, Ultra Man, and Journey to the West TV shows.

But it was only recently that I really wanted to make this piece - it was inspired by break-ups and dating experiences I had. I feel like the traditional use of red bean in my culture really laid down the foundation for the theme. I also explored Faye Wong and the song writer Xi Lin’s inspiration for the song. I feel like the original inspiration of making the red bean rice for someone, but because of uncertainty on the other partner’s commitment to the relationship, the red bean rice cooked bad. It is such a beautiful metaphor. And also I just Love Faye Wong and how fierce she is when talking about love in her interviews.

There is something about this red bean soup can idea that I really like. It is a common mass produced product. I feel like in a queer sense we are all born into this world told or structured to love in the same way, like we are restrained in the can. But then we need to break free and find our own individuality in dating and love. It feels like a coming out moment, like coming out of the closet haha.

On the other hand, another idea I want to explore is being authentic in love and relationships. I feel like in the beginning of dating it all feels very great, romantic, and glamorous, but there will eventually be problems, flaws, vulnerable moments. But I still want to be loved for who I am, which is why I come out of the can to reveal a rather plain dress in the performance, contrasting it to the glamorous beginning. Not saying that being glamorous is the opposite of being authentic (because I do love being glamorous hahaha). But more like, wanting to be loved in all forms. Appreciate the relationship and stick around in its ups and downs.


JSG: You first began exploring the use of costume and character building last year through your work The Abyss. Can you talk about the themes in this work, and what made you move from installation work into performance?


FG: I began to finally have the capacity to reflect properly on my migration journey. And it was honestly a really really hard time. The performance was divided into 3 parts - separating from the original place, in the process of migration, and finding new belonging and community. I feel like costumes can enhance this work because the interaction between the costume and the environment showcase those different states of belonging. Like, the spikey nature of the armour makes the character stand out from the environment a lot. And it’s almost like the character can not be assimilated into the environment.

I was thinking a lot about the ‘skilled migration policy’ rhetoric, which is that you have to be extraordinary or excellent in certain things to be granted permanent residency or citizenship. And that creates stress, inequalities, and suffering. It is so much about fitting in. And I feel like it’s not about fitting in or assimilating, it’s about letting migrants be whoever they wanna be. Be a dark lord alien if you want to haha. And be celebrated for your spikes.

I feel like I used to be pretty nervous about performing live or being on stage. But I have become more and more relaxed about that now. I really want to be present in my work now. I want to really be there to convey the emotions. Haha, I feel like I’m in my clown era and it’s really fun.


JSG: Your work is influenced by digital culture, in particular, video games. What first attracted you to work with video games, and why do you keep returning to this medium?


FG: I was always a gamer growing up and my parents were very strict about gaming time. So I’d have to sneak and play them secretly. Haha. Maybe I was very oppressed in gaming and just wanted to keep going back to them.

I also feel like this experience is parallel to the controversial clinical psychiatrist Yang Yongxin’s Anti-Gaming Boot Camp, where teenagers were captured and tortured for gaming too much. I really felt for this issue and wanted to put out a show to raise awareness. I just thought it is a way of reclaiming to use gaming as a medium to argue against someone who is anti-gaming. Like trying to liberate through gaming and argue for this medium.

And then I just fell in love with making games in general anyway. I think coding for games, drawing the sprites, and tweeking 1000 settings to get it to work is just so fun. It is a lot of problem solving and watching endless Youtube tutorials, but there is a feeling of satisfaction when it finally works in the way you want it to.

I tried to explore some other themes around migration, displacement, spatial constraint, and nostalgia. I feel like for such themes the gaming/ digital

environment really can show these experiences. I am thinking about the place as a character that responds to the player’s feelings and desires. Hybrid identities moving through different states of belonging.


JSG: The Western Sydney art community is an important part of your practice, and you are currently a co-director of PARI, which is an artist-run space there. Can you tell us about PARI, why you chose to work with this initiative, and how they support your development as an artist?


FG: The time at PARI has been really precious and has in so many ways changed my life. I began as a volunteer during the first gallery working bee call-out. A good friend of mine introduced me to a lot of people there. I felt a sense of belonging and community pretty much straight away. There is something that is more flexible in the way that PARI runs. And you get to really try and test out new ideas.

Soon after the gallery officially opened, I got to participate in an exhibition called ‘Mixed Business’, which is a show dedicated to all the volunteers. I got to show a new game and it was a good time. The idea of a gallery as a convenience store for the local community is really heart-warming. There used to be so many ‘Mixed Businesses’ in Western Sydney. So it’s very nostalgic as well.

I felt really supported because PARI as a space to support emerging artists really helped me. Unlike other galleries that expect the show proposal to be complete, PARI acknowledges that when you are at an emerging level, to have completely organised proposals, is very hard. Instead PARI curates these shows based on individual applications and the artworks’ shared theme. It helps artists to network and brings people with similar interests and practices together.

There’s still a lot to learn and to experiment after I became a co-director. I’m really interested in producing events. This year I worked with Westies for Palestine and Ourverse on some events. It’s really beautiful and moving when people come together at PARI.


JSG: Can you share some insights about new work you’re developing right now, and how it will build upon your current work?


FG: I’m working on a new piece called ‘The Path’. It is building on the process of ‘The Abyss’ around creating costumes based on migration experiences. For this piece, I am interviewing four friends about their experiences of migration and am building the costume collaboratively with them. It is very exciting to learn about other people’s migration experiences from different ages, circumstances, reasons, and the processes. For the performance, I’m thinking that we will all perform our individual migration journey, then come together to form a new community.

This piece will debut this year in October at the Parramatta Lanes festival and is also supported by Parramatta Artist Studios. It’s very exciting.


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Fei Gao is an emerging artist based in Dharug Country / Western Sydney. He has been a finalist in the Burwood Art Prize, the Fisher’s Ghost Award, and the Mosman Youth Art Prize. Fei’s favourite video games are Yu-Gi-Oh, World of Goo, and Limbo.


To learn more about Fei and his work, visit his website here: https://feigao.info/

Julia Scott Green is a visual artist, arts worker and arts writer based in Eora / Sydney. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she has taught and coordinated lessons in photography, media studies, and visual art. Her favourite video games are Journey, Gorogoa, and Assassin’s Creed: Origins.