I was first introduced to the work of SF-based artist Kayla Quan from her participation in the Exotify Elsewhere group show in the Bayview earlier this year. Kayla was showing original pieces she made that were included in her zine, Jaded, Jaded, Jaded. In that zine she shares anecdotes from her experiences on an extended backpacking trip in Asia last year.
Kayla Quan was born in South San Francisco and grew up between San Diego and SF. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz last year she spent five months in Asia before coming back to San Francisco to live and work.
Kayla's work comes from her own experience - being Asian American and a woman. She has self published multiple zines with a spectrum of content, from being Asian American, public sexual harassment, and text as tool to empower people she identifies with.
Her work includes as much writing as they do illustrations. With her printmaking background, Kayla creates work in collage, painting, and various print methods.
I recently met with Kayla to talk about her work and traveling Asia. Read the interview and view more photos below.
Kayla Quan: I grew up in the Bay Area and Orange County. This answer always kinds of confuses people because of geographic distance between the two places, but put simply: I’m a product of divorced parents. I was born in San Francisco, CA and spent my early childhood in the Bay Area—Daly City, South San Francisco, And San Mateo. When I was in 6th grade my mother moved me and my 2 siblings to Irvine, California, where I then spent my middle school to high school years.
When I first moved to Irvine, I hated it. Since I was a little Bay Area baby, I was taught to hate LA. I’m not really sure why the dichotomy between LA and SF exist so strongly, but it was instilled in me at a young age to dislike LA ( and LA basically equated to all of Southern California haha).
But Orange County eventually grew on me. Some of my first friends in 6th grade became a group of skater boiz and I adopted the identity of a skater girl with very limited skateboarding skills. I always had love for the Bay Area though. My mom tried her best to make sure I got to see my dad on a semi-regular basis, so we’d drive from Irvine to San Mateo once a month, and every summer until the end of high school I would spend at least a couple weeks living with my dad. The drives were always long and daunting and hard on my mom, but I always considered my trips to the bay as trips back home. Home eventually became Irvine as well, but I always felt like a weird outsider there.
KQ: My dad was an SF bad boi, graft dude. He had a pretty rough childhood and was also innately artistic, so he started writing at a young age and eventually became really involved in the early graft scene in San francisco. He used to run with TMF. I’ve heard some pretty mainey stories about my dad’s wild party boy days. I’ve made a print about my dad actually. There’s a picture of him with a mullet and lipstick drawings all over his face. My dad is featured as one of the pioneers of graffiti in SF, you can check out the documentary “piece by piece.” My parents are really young—they were only 20 and 21 when they first had my eldest sibling. I often think about my parents and their younger years. They were little babies raising other little babies. My sister had a keg at her first birthday party. My mom used to drink 40oz every day of her single year of high school, and one time some guy challenged her to a drinking match. This guy bet his car on the fact that women couldn’t drink. My mom took him up on his challenge and I guess they drank until they passed out and whoever woke up first won. My mom ended up winning but didn’t take the dude’s pink slip for his car.
Piece by Kayla.
SFACC: Can you describe you backpacking trip you did in Asia last year? Why did you decide to spend some time there?KQ: I think moving around when I was younger instilled deep angst feelings of needing to travel to find place and purpose. I definitely outgrew those feelings of traveling for escapist reasons, or traveling to find out who I am, but I still held on to the belief that traveling is important for the sole reason of seeing shit. I guess I still had other angsty and unresolved questions in myself that I wanted to sort out post grad, like: how do I know where I want to move next and be happy moving there if I haven’t even begun to see a fraction of the world? I definitely still romanticized the notion of being somewhere far away and falling in love with another place that was beyond my framework of mind but those feelings also dissipated a couple weeks into travel. I had to check myself while traveling—I asked myself: how am I contributing to the gross exotification or othering of lands I’ve never been to? What kind of privileges do I have while traveling as a US born citizen and what space do I take up being an english speaker with no other language skills? Other questions I had was, “what is it like to be an Asian american in Asia? What is it like to visit my motherland? Why did my grandparents leave their homes to come to US? What can I learn from existing in places where the majority of people look like me? What does it really mean to exist as person in a globalized society? In what ways am I contributing to and operating under capitalistic confines while traveling?”
Page from Jaded, Jaded, Jaded.
Traveling was really grounding and challenging. I was with a friend for 2 months and by myself for 3 and a half months. Being alone and so far away from home was a liberating experience in a lot of ways, but it was also really isolating. There are a lot of hours in the day when you don’t have responsibilities to anyone but yourself. Learning how to check-in with yourself and depend yourself as the only person to get your needs met can be pretty lonely, especially when those around you don’t share the same first language. I went to 7 different countries in 5.5 months. I saved up money used pretty much all of my savings to fund this extensive trip. I don’t really know what in me said I had to do such a long trip, but it’s always just been one of those things that i had to do for myself, otherwise I would’ve always wondered, what if? I’m definitely aware of how lucky I am to have had an extensive period of travel. I’m a first generation college graduate with city parents that don’t like camping, and “ backpacking" isn’t something that’s even in their vocabulary. Being so far away from my loved ones for an extended period of time, really helped me define my roots. I was never able to say fully that I felt like I was Asian-enough, or that I was a POC enough, or that i was even “American”, because i always had people trying to tell me otherwise. But coming back I can say confidently that my experience is unique and that I really identify as being Asian American.
SFACC: Can you talk about the farm and the cafe you painted?
KQ: The internet is this mind blowing thing that allows you to connect with humans that you never even knew existed in the world haha. I signed up for workaway.org and had this really wonderful experience of living/working on a farm for free for a month. The whole idea behind work away is that you get to travel and trade your labor for accommodations (and sometimes meals too if you’re lucky). I stayed in sichuan province on a farm. Instead of doing actual farm work, I got to start my own project. There was this little wooden shack next to one of the lakes on the farm property that the farm owners eventually wanted to turn into a cafe for visitors and other volunteers. I got to pick out all the colors and choose my own creative direction. The only thing the farm owners requested was that I painted something nature themed. So I got to paint and drink 1% Chinese beer while this little dog named Tudou (potato) kept me company all day.
There was a period of time where no other volunteers lived on the farm and the only english speaking farmer workers left. The peace was nice, but I also grew to appreciate the ability to communicate your feelings through full articulation of words. The cafe turned out to be really cute if I do say so myself. I also got to choose furniture for the inside of it and put little bar stools on the outside of it. I choose tradition Chinese fabric for curtains on the inside and hung plants to soften the all wood interior.
SFACC: What are somethings you took away from that trip? How did your experiences affect you?
KQ: I’m still processing my trip. I don’t really have all the answers to a lot of my questions. I’m also trill trying to navigate talking about my experiences without sounding like a pretentious brat. I did meet some wonderful and kind people along the way, but majority of the time I ran into people that I clashed with, and that was a really humbling experience for me. I learned that I’m kind of a homebody and that I get excited and motivated by surrounding myself with people I love. I often spread myself too thin, and would say that I have multiple communities of people and friends, but while traveling I couldn’t really get down with the rest of the backpacking scene. I couldn’t help but feel problematic a lot of the time. I do best when I allow myself to settle down in a place long enough to build relationships. I’m learning how to take things slowly and to not be anxious and not worrying about what I should or shouldn’t be doing. All that free time while away gave me space to deconstruct all the ways I’ve been conditioned to buy into certain societal prescriptions. Most of the ideals I’ve been fed have been based around pretty heteronormative, conventional, and linear progressions into adulthood and career decisions. I don’t know, mostly I learned that I think too fuckin much.
Page from Jaded, Jaded, Jaded.
SFACC: From reading your zine Jaded Jaded Jaded, you were hyper aware of the relationships between you as an Asian American woman - in Asia as a traveler, your white traveling partners, and the locals. It must have been a bit of a shock to actually have those conversations and experiences in 2015, and now here. KQ: I titled my zine "Jaded, Jaded, Jaded" because I was being facetious, but I’m not entirely kidding around anymore. I’m learning how to transform my frustration away from exhaustion and more towards learning how to practice patience with people. It;s really exhausting being a POC and feeling the need to teach people how to ask us the right questions (and honestly, it’s not your job to assume that responsibility if you don’t want to) but I just see it as like, if I can’t practice loving kindness or believe in transformation through dialogue then what is there to hope for, ya know? I literally had Chinese men tell me that I wasn’t Chinese because I didn’t speak Chinese. And I guess I leaned how to surrender and just be like, ya well I do have Chinese heritage in my blood, but I can see why you would say that because I look like you but can’t communicate with you.. but here we are, hi. Overall, I’ve learned that I can’t expect people to understand where I’m coming from right off the bat because they only know their own experiences through the lens of their own positionalites, and the same goes for me.
Spread from Jaded, Jaded, Jaded.
SFACC: You work in a variety of mediums, coverings several ideas, emphasizing personal experiences. Your work is narrative driven through your memories of lived experiences. Your perspective is unique, but shared with other people with similar backgrounds - More of us are doing work via our individual lens. This kind of work is important because it tells a story that certain people can relate to and connect with that hasn't been shared before through art. It is important because our identities are important, because of the histories the generations previous have lived - excluded, mistreated, punished etc, and that experience still trails among poc in various ways today.
A photo of Kayla's grandmother.
KQ: I totally agree. I often questions what’s the point of making art. Is art just a means of letting people who experience trauma articulate and release their feelings? Do we make art just to be seen? Is is totally narcissistic to be an artist?
I took a lithography class one summer at UCSC, and my professor, Paul Rangel, ended the class with some words of advice. He told us all that if we want to be better artists, we have to develop our heroes. Developing artistic heroes is actually something that I often have a hard time articulating--maybe because of the art I consume in galleries and museums don't always look like the kind of work that I'm producing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say I look at art and I'm not inspired--I definitely am. However, sometimes I look at fine art and wonder if I should be producing work in a different style. Making art in general has always been something I've had a lot of resistance towards because for a long time I told myself that I'd never be an artist. My parents never told me what I should or shouldn't be but I was always encouraged to do something along the lines of nursing or physical therapy. I joined the art department kinda late in my college career.
Art in Kayla's room by Sarah Hornsby.
SFACC: I appreciate how much text you include in your work. It is can be similar to comix and and graphic novels. Have you thought of that parallel before?
Page from Jaded, Jaded, Jaded.
KQ: I've been encouraged to write comic books and graphic novels. I wrote a graphic novel called "PLZ don't luv me: a graphic. Novel about the disappointing messiness of human relationships" haha it was a short lithograph booklet I made...basically talking about how I feel emotional unavailable and unwilling to date anyone. It's cute and sad and kinda funny but mostly true.
My friend just let me borrrow his Ines Estrada "Lapsos" book. I'm trying to find the confidence to make longer projects. I've got some ideas brewing.
SFACC: There is humor in your work, because you are sharing your honest experiences. But its pretty much just ridiculous the way people treat different people - and white privilege is so global.
Spread from Jaded, Jaded, Jaded.
KQ: I deal best with the world in general when I allow myself to find comedic relief in awful happenings. I grew up in a family that capped on each other pretty relentlessly, and although I will say that joking about people’s emotions isn’t the most productive or healthy means of coping by any means, I will say that it’s shaped me and my views of the world. I’m constantly contradicting myself by finding new ways to build myself up while simultaneously acting out in self-depreicating ways. I have a lot of sad girl thoughts, but I brush them off by not taking myself too seriously.
SFACC: You've made a few zines in the past years. What were some of those zines about and how did you start using the format?
KQ: A lot of my zines have been made in really crude ways—totally hand made. My first zine I ever made was for a class where I cut out magazines and cut out my drawings form my notebooks and cut, pasted, and scanned them together. I got a degree in art but honestly have never taken a class on design or have been formally taught computer skills.
SFACC: Your illustrations also have some stylistic similarities to folk art illustrations - how they are kind of flat - scenes depict physical depth by way of foreground to background as bottom of the page to top of the page and your use of bold colors. Are you influenced by folk art? or do you think this is just a coincidence?
Painting by Kayla.
KQ: I guess you could say that I am influenced by folk art. Every time I come across textile patterns, prints, or books at the library about folk art I'll snap a picture and save it in my photo library for eventual reference. But I guess, I'm hesitant to say yes entirely, because I do that for all kinds of art; I wouldn't say that I actively pay more attention to folk art. 
Painting by Kayla.
I do have to say that I love Margaret Kilgallen--and her art is definitely inspired by folk art. Someone wrote in my Senior Show guest book that my art/ gallery installations looked had Mission School aesthetics and that was a huge compliment. That comment also illuminated to me that I wasn't even conscious really of what styles shaped my art. I was unconsciously making work that embodied work of the artists that first taught me it was ok to make weird faces, doodles in an illustrative style, and text work. I didn't know what the Mission School was who was a part of it until my friends in NYC had me watch "Beautiful Losers" with them. This was my junior year of college. My dad had a Berry Mcgee book at our house that I used to skim through as a young teenager and he also used to talk to me about REM (aka the horse lady aka Ruby Neri), so I've known that some of those cats were around, but didn't actually make the connection that they were all making art together until much later. 
Piece by Kayla.
With Kayla in her home-studio.
KQ: I have a lot of contentious feelings about being in SF. My parents and grandparents have lived in city for years but everyones pretty much moved away from it. My great-grandparents still live on Irving, but for myself personally this is the longest I've ever lived in the city ( 4 months). I have a lot of weird feelings about trying to make a place for myself when so many other long-standing residents are holding on tightly to their city with whatever place-keeping tactics they are utilizing. It’s been a pretty sad summer in general, I mean weather wise its been gloomy here most days, and in terms of people dying—its been a real sad 2016. I don’t like placing the blame on one individual group, but honestly I feel the effects of the tech industry heavy in the city. SF is such a tiny tiny city that effects of the tech boom are pretty unshakable. I used to drive into the city as a little girl with my dad and I would get butterflies in my stomach every time i got to see the city skyline. sf feels like its becoming culturally sterilized and bought out by more affluent people coming in and changing the landscape of the city. I don’t get those butterflies or feelings of giddiness anymore. I will always have love for this city, but things have been funky lately. I can’t place my finger on what exactly makes me feel sad about the city, its definitely a combination of things, but mostly I feel like its not my place to talk about the city changing when I don’t even know how to use the muni without looking at google maps. 
Kayla Quan.
KQ: I have a couple of zines in mind. One called “U aint that special” based off of a ridiculous encounter I had on the street with this idiot man. He kept yelling at me “you aint that special” after I told him he was gross for saying that he goes to San Mateo to fuck all the Filipino bitches."
Another thing I’m working on is curating a group show called “Confessions.” I want to create a space for artist to reveal some sort of intimate reflection or articulation of a thought that they might not be so outwardly comfortable in sharing with people outside of the context of their art process. I’ve been toying with idea of making a zine called “Letters I never sent, All the shit I never said,” and it would comprised of intimate letters I wrote to people but never had the courage to tell any of them.
Thank you Kayla for sharing your work and speaking with us. Keep up with Kayla's work by visiting her website and following her on Instagram @quantitiess.
