Angela Lian

0:00Hi everyone. Thanks for having me. It's nice that I'm very excited to be here. Very nervous, but I'm here. I'd like to start with a stretch. You can join me if you haven't allowed yourself to stretch today. Nice. My name is Angela Lean and I'm a Chinese and Taiwanese American artist and designer from the Hudson Valley. One thing you should know about me is that I'm in pain all the time. That's why my practice a little bit of everything and constantly cycling so that I keep moving. Three things that hurt me, sitting for too long, standing for too long, and staring at a screen for too long.

0:40If I had to describe my practice in four words, it would be body, mind, and printed matter. And this shows up as video art, collage, illustration, printed matter, analog techniques, and dance. I'm currently a graphic designer and video content creator at Bagu and I feel lucky to work for a company that I'll use my creative building, but more on that later. My body shows up in a lot of my work because I love to relate dance to design, body to form or body to letter. Each of our bodies have their own unique visual language based on our capacity. So my work seeks to explore that.

1:25I also have my own Zoom practice that combines illustration, collage, photos, and writing that pushes me to stay curious about myself and the world. It's happening is an art practice by myself and my sister Eileen in which we've explored handmaking, self-publishing, printed matter, and performance. We attend a few markets a year to practice seeming more extroverted than we actually are.

1:50So, I grew up as a competitive gymnast, but I had a back injury at age 12 that shifted me towards dance and movement. In middle school, I started an Instagram account to feature gymnasts and dancers that became viral and introduced me to the world of graphic design. I would make photo edits and graphics for contests and giveaways I hosted with small businesses. And ironically, I then chose a profession that is largely sedentary, graphic design. So, I picked up hobbies to compat my excessive screen time, but they ended up making the pain worse. In high school and college, I was crocheting, embroidering, rug tufting. I had to stop all of them because they hurt too much.

2:40I had neck pain for posture or vertigo. A friend once told me that my art practice is like scooping mud from a dry reservoir because I'm constantly battling my capacity and my ambitions. What does it mean to tend to the body and creative well-being? I'm always asking myself this question. I don't think this topic is hot enough. our bodies in relation to the work we're doing and how we gaslight our pain. I regularly experience back and neck pain, copoggenic headaches, vertigo and muscle spasms and migraines. And I quickly understood that if I was going to exist in this field, I needed to start bringing more of my body into my practice.

3:30Talking about my body, I have a connective tissue disorder called hyper mobile spectrum disorder. I also have Lyme disease and ADHD. chronically ill and neurode divergent living in a chronic living with chronic pain in a field that is largely sedentary and on screens. There's a lot more of us than you think. There are a few these are a few of the pain management tools that I use on a daily basis. My menthol products, theane acupressure mat, heat pad, cupping device, foam roller, just little something to get me through the day. And I'm always down to exchange knowledge about different tools and strategies for chronic pain. But just know that I'm not a doctor in any way, just a forced enthusiast.

4:20Bottom line is I can't work the way I used to in high school, college, even in the last year. I've had chronic back pain since I was 12, but after college, I had COVID three times and then got line disease last year. It drastically changed the ability of my body to endure any position, any amount of screen time, light, heat, dust, and certain foods. Over the year alone, I have become much less able-bodied. The irony of it all is that I've been looking out for myself since college. My undergrad thesis was called Moving, making moving, and it was a methodology of making that involved chance, movement, and the physicality of the body through green screen video art. This was my first attempt to build an art and design practice that could support my body through constant movement. And I'd like to show a few video pieces from this thesis.

5:20Heat. Heat. [music] [music] See, [music] [music] see. [music] Maybe in the darkness [music] you could see me. Take me [music] to the [singing] light you [music] know. Cuz I don't want to play this game [music] again. Why must [singing] I always defend [music] what it [singing] means to be [music] free [music] to be my [music] Santiito may know me as back pain baby. This is a moniker I created on Tik Tok back in 2022 when I was freelancing, traveling, and navigating postcard confusion. It served as a playground for me to promote creative well-being, share design resources, and of course, dance and talk about my chronic pain. And with that, Flower Girl was this character I created to play with humor in my work, espe essentially becoming a mascot for back pain baby. a dancing flower that had too much time on her hands, setting up a green screen in her parents' kitchen, and letting this cardboard head cut up the sides of her face.

6:35Video art is a way for me to exercise gentle physicality and form through short vignettes. This is a sustainable form of expression for my body. I often start by laying down, listening to music, and imagining scenes before moving and realizing it digitally. Basically, the more work I can do in my head or in my body, the less I have to do on a screen. And sometimes I'm only able to visualize the feeling. So I have to play more when I'm editing, which also feels like a form of improvised movement. Eternal Monologue is a video or series which uses chance in this way. And this is one video from that series. [music]

7:30Video art has led me to some pretty cool opportunities. This is a clip from a video commission I did for It's Nice That back in 2023. And before I started working for Bagu 3 years ago, I had first created a video of my Bagu bags with the caption, "This is what I would make if I worked for Bagu." They ended up reaching out to me to make a few video art commissions, and this was the first one. [music] Moral of the story is shoot your shot.

8:10So I now make videos for Bagu as a job and I've continued to refine my practice to be more sustainable for my body. Sometimes I use my green screen and other times I explore more analog techniques like cyanotype which I used for the June sale campaign last summer but also printed matter collage illustration when the goal is to always sell a bag with both the light and functionality. World building is so important. So I try to bring in several techniques.

8:45Another world building part of the Bagu universe is our inspiration collages which we typically make for each season. You can see how I've pulled references from new colors or styles to tell the story of our spring 26 collection. These are my favorite thing to make. Collage in general is also an improvised movement practice. I've been going to the New York picture collection a lot to collect imagery and it feels like a scavenger hunt every time I go. The process of pulling large fil folders and flipping through images is just so physical and tactile and just fun.

9:25When I first started at Bagon 2023, I had the opportunity to create a zen that would be a free takeaway in stores. So, I created this system of collaging prints using past BU bags. Pasting and collaging and puzzling are such meditative acts, but my body's boundary always comes back to this. Doing anything for too long will start to hurt. Too long sometimes means 5 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. and I love the work that I do, but I just have to be so cognizant of my body's capacity at all times. My ADHD and chronic pain are kind of best friends because with both, I literally have to keep moving.

10:10I want to end with a visualization that my sematic therapist once gave me. Imagine you're being electrocuted by an electric fool. Your muscles contract and your hand is literally stuck wrapped around the pole. In this state of constant tension, you lose control of your body. The tension masks sensation, similar to when you're so engulfed in a project that you ignore your body's signals. When you turn off the power source and are able to let go, the pain may set in. Is there a world where we don't just let our bodies be consumed, but also considered? Thanks for having me, and I hope that you keep moving.