One interesting story about the Hapa Project is that I would get people from very homogenous areas. I had a woman write me from Oklahoma who wrote me and said “You must fly out to Oklahoma to photograph me for this because you’ll never believe it, I’m black and Korean!” I didn’t know what to say, that her world was that small, that to her that she was the only one in the world. In some sense that’s great, but I had to write to her, I said “I would love to photograph you, but I can’t fly out there, and I’ve photographed probably fifty people that are black Korean. Just so you know there’s other people out there.” I wanted it to be a kind of positive thing, that she’d know, but I think she kind of felt like she wasn’t “the one” anymore, she wasn’t Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, and she never wrote me back again.
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.
Interviewee Bio
Kip Fulbeck was born in 1965 to a Chinese mother and English/Irish father. At age five, he was told by his full-blooded Chinese cousins that he was Hapa. He never gave much thought to the term as a child. As he grew older, faced with the dearth of knowledge relating to mixed-race identity (or worse, the negative connotations associated with it), he began thinking about ways to promote a more realistic and human portrayal of Hapa identity.
Fulbeck chose to explore this issue by creating the Hapa Project as a forum for Hapa to answer the question “What are you?” in their own words and be photographed in simple head-on portraits. He has now photographed over 1000 people from all ages and walks of life. The project is now a book, Part Asian, 100% Hapa (Chronicle Books, 2006) and an exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum from June 8 through October 29, 2006 titled kip fulbeck: part asian, 100% hapa.
Kip Fulbeck has been making films and art about Hapa identity since 1990. Known as the nation's leading artist on the identity, multiracial/ethnicity, and art and pop culture, he has spoken and exhibited his award-winning films, performance, and photography throughout the world. Fulbeck is currently Professor and Chair of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a three-time recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Member Award and also an affiliate faculty member in Asian American Studies and Film Studies. (May 3, 2006)