@gentle.oriental
Instagram Transformed as an Interactive Museum of Asian American Culture
Gabrielle Widjaja is a multimedia creative born in China, raised in California, and currently working as a digital designer in Brooklyn. Widjaja’s current artistic and social project is “Gentle Oriental,” which she describes as “a practice about honoring and reinterpreting our history and culture as Asian Americans” that pursues the inquiry “How can we reclaim the term ‘oriental’?” Widjaja seeks to reform the culture of Asian American youth by using the “culture itself” as a medium for self-reflection and understanding (Widjaja, About). Widjaja’s aesthetic is based on “omnipresent visual features within Chinese communities.” These designs often have a kitschy charm to them, and are often considered identifiable markers of “Chinese aesthetic” in America (Ong). This article will focus on Widjaja’s Instagram, @gentle.oriental, account as an active site where a conversation of Asian American identity, culture, and representation is constantly being worked out in real time. This conversation is not blocked by academic walls or dominated by a white, Western academic perspective, but instead is a public act of sorting out what it means to be Asian American, from the perspective of Asian Americans, for the benefit of shaping contemporary Asian American culture. Widjaja’s account includes posts of her tattoo practice, conversations with Asian American followers that capture the ongoing frustrations of the Asian diaspora experience, and a digital shop for her work and merchandise. Analyzing Gentle Oriental’s use of tattoos as an art form, its dual use of Instagram as a personal profile as well as the project’s home profile, and the marketing and selling of its aesthetic products, this article will demonstrate how Widjaja effectively transforms Instagram as a platform for Asian American activism, education, and culture shaping. Through her implementation of Gentle Oriental as an Instagram project, Widjaja has effectively formed the mission in a site where contemporary Asian American youth culture is currently located. Rather than forming Gentle Oriental in a traditional art or academic sphere, separated from mainstream culture, Gentle Oriental inserts itself into the mainstream.
A note to the reader: this article uses ‘Gentle Oriental’ and ‘@gentle.oriental’ to respectively refer to the project as a whole, which is defined in a manifesto on a webpage, and the project’s Instagram, which is the main site of the mission’s active expression.
@gentle.oriental’s posts largely consist of Widjaja’s tattoo work. Gentle Oriental’s tattooing is a key element of the project’s mission to reshape contemporary Asian American youth identity in that it serves as evidence of the Gentle Oriental’s aesthetics uniting Asian American youth. When receiving a flash tattoo design created and done by Widjaja, an individual inherently subscribes to the mission of Gentle Oriental. As artist of the initial design and the actual tattoo, the aesthetic cannot stand apart from Widjaja and the mission of Gentle Oriental. Not only does the client subscribe, but they literally carry the mission with them on their person. Through the act of needling a design by Widjaja on one’s body, the individual aligns themselves with the pursuit of understanding their Asian American diasporic identity.
Due to Widjaja’s intentional decision to not only post the initial design of the tattoo, but also post the final work on the client’s body, these posts go beyond the mere display of visual aesthetics and become a digital mosaic of identities, forming a sense of community through her work. The “we” that Widjaja refers to in her mission statement takes physical shape through the mass of clients that she’s tattooed. Going beyond just displaying the clients, Instagram as an interactive platform allows the recipient of the tattoo to interact with the post itself. Recipients often comment on @gentle.oriental posts that they are featured in. With this engagement, the mosaic of identities isn’t merely a metaphorical thought, but a tangible reality. A visitor has the ability to see hundreds of tattoos on the feed view of @gentle.oriental’s profile, then clicking into an individual post they’re able to view the tags and the comments, and from there they’re able to go to the profile of the recipient (Fig. 1,2,3). Thus, @gentle.oritenal’s profile literally threads together hundreds of visible Asian Americans, serving as evidence of the effectiveness of Gentle Oriental’s mission to unite Asian Americans and redefine the cultural use of traditional ‘oriental’ aesthetics. Specifically through the tattoo posts, @gentle.oriental creates a community around Widjaja’s repurposed Chinese aesthetics.
@gentle.oriental functions on two levels: the primary level being Gabrielle Widjaja’s personal account, layered with real-time glimpses of Widjaja’s personal musings on Asian American identity. Widjaja has expressed on various posts that her artistic practice moves slower so that each piece she produces is sourced from a place of originality and thoughtfulness (Fig. 4). By blending her own emotions and perspective not only into her work but also the account itself, Widjaja establishes personal claim over the account so that any aesthetic cannot be detached from her own identity. This implies that all posts, even those that don’t appear to have any explicit ‘Asian American references,’ are pieces of her identity as an Asian American. Symbolically, Widjaja intertwines her very identity with the mission of the project. The profile and biography of the account depict and describe Widjaja herself, yet the account handle is the name of the project. Thus, each post is delivered by an identifiable person, Gabrielle Widjaja (not a nameless, faceless title) yet still under the header of the artistic mission: @gentle.oriental. When a post is made, a user sees that the post is from “gentle.oriental,” but with Widjaja’s profile picture next to it. Identifying the mission with herself in this way representatively aligns Widjaja’s own Asian American identity with the project, subsequently aligning her own personal mission as an individual with the mission of the project. Through this, Widjaja expresses that Gentle Oriental is not a distant “side project” in her life, but an integrative artistic practice that’s deeply intertwined with, and cannot exist as separate from, her personal life.
The secondary level of @gentle.oriental’s Instagram is the contextual frame for the project’s visual art and products. As a medium of transmitting information, an Instagram profile isn’t necessarily read linearly, but instead a visiting user has the individual freedom to jump through and scan posts according to their own choosing. The initial feed view of a profile is visually driven, only offering the image of the post and none of the written text that’s associated with it (captions, tags, comments) (Fig. 5). This means that, initially, the aesthetics of the images stand alone and it’s the responsibility of the viewer to engage with the post in order to understand the context surrounding the visual. Gentle Oriental’s Instagram is more effective than solely the sale of Gentle Oriental merchandise because without proper context, the aesthetic has the potential of being separated from the artist and the mission of the project. As a public platform that allows for interaction with and purchases from a global audience, @gentle.oriental actively works out the issues and frustrations of the Asian American experience of grappling with identity more than the consumable illustrations, designs, and tattoos of the project itself. If a viewer seeks to purchase merchandise or art, they are unable to access the product without first encountering Widjaja’s own voice. In every post, Widjaja provides context from her own perspective — her feelings behind a particular work, the inspiration that it was born from, or the musings that it conjured for her. In this way, Widjaja reinvents Instagram as her own personal, digital museum that’s housed under the roof of her identity. Simply due to the nature of the platform, the two levels of @gentle.oriental work together so that a visitor is unable to escape Widjaja’s presence on the profile. This effectively makes Widjaja’s use of Chinese aesthetics the intriguing visual surface of a richer depth: she builds a following and takes advantage of the visual nature of the platform through her art, and then imbues each work, each post, with her own personal perspective. As a fluid, constantly active site, Instagram offers a raw angle of Widjaja that isn’t accessible through published, edited work. As an account that is centered around Asian American identity and run by an Asian American, the stories, selfies, and responses to comments and direct messages are live snapshots of Widjaja’s daily perspective. This level of intimate interaction and engagement breathes life into the shaping of Asian American culture from the ground level.
An additional function of @gentle.oriental is the promotion of Widjaja’s works and products that are for sale. In her biography, Widjaja includes a link tree to current items for purchase. By inserting her work into the consumer market, the consumable products of Widjaja’s project become symbolically layered in meaning through the transactional relationship with the public. In a 2021 interview with “It’s Nice That,” Widjaja herself expressed “I feel like I’m constantly toeing the line of appropriating my own culture somehow.” Even to Widjaja, the potential for capitalism to undermine her work and mission seems to be a looming threat, yet Widjaja’s consumable products ultimately work to further her mission. In “Culture, consumption and choice…” Shaw and Clarke emphasize that “… Symbolic meaning is rooted in the product’s social context… It is within this social context that individuals use the consumption of consumer goods to create an identity, build relationships and structure psychological events.” (Shaw, 165) Rather than interacting in an academic or museum environment, appealing to an audience that’s primed for learning, Widjaja inserts her products primarily through Instagram, to a vast audience that’s identity-forward, driven to make decisions based on how it personally reflects them. Who a user follows, reacts to, and engages with reflects on their own profile, and thus their identity. While the focus of the project is the aesthetic mission itself, the selling of products via Instagram is the seal of Gentle Oriental: the bond created between creator and consumer has its roots in American capitalism, while the products themselves symbolically interrupt mainstream American culture. Rather than creating and displaying work that represents ideas of interruption and reclamation in a museum or selling work in a high art market for a small subset of individuals, Gentle Oriental takes action in popular, mainstream culture through the selling and buying of its goods primarily via Instagram. Discovering and purchasing products through @gentle.oriental, the consumer is introduced first to Gabrielle Widjaja as an individual, and then to the products of Gentle Oriental. Rather than purchasing from a faceless brand, purchases from Gentle Oriental are directly, identifiably, tied to Widjaja’s personal identity, and thus her experience as an Asian American. Gentle Oriental’s Instagram account is a vital function of the mission’s marketed products; without the Instagram account, the sale of Gentle Oriental works could be misinterpreted as contributing to the appropriation of Asian aesthetics for mass consumption based on visual appeal.
@gentle.oriental is an active site where the conversation on Asian American identity, culture shaping, and activism never ceases. Through her account and the many aspects of Gentle Oriental’s mission, Widjaja demonstrates herself as a leading force in Asian American youth culture by making the artistic manifestations of her experience a source of community and engagement for Asian Americans as well as public education and exposure for all.
WORKS CITED
Mao, Elaine [@elainekmao], Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/elainekmao/
Ong, Jyni. “Riffing off Chinatown staples, Gabrielle Widjaja adds a stylistic spin to reflexology posters, Hongbaos and more.” It’s Nice That, 23 Feb. 2021. https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/gabrielle-widjaja-illustration-graphic-design-230221
Shaw, Deirdre. “Culture, consumption and choice: towards a conceptual relationship.” Journal of consumer studies and home economics, vol. 22, no. 3, September 1998. Wiley Black-well Full Collection, doi:10.1111/j.1470–6431.1998.tb00727.x
Widjaja, Gabrielle. “About.” Gentle Oriental, August 2021. https://www.gentleoriental.co/about
Widjaja, Gabrielle [@gentle.oriental], Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/gentle.oriental/
