By depicting pornographic depictions of Asian men, Bui highlights and reclaims the mainstream media portrayal of Asian men as effeminate and asexual, restoring their power and autonomy by rendering them breaking through traditional vessels and shattering stereotypes. Bui shatters these vessels and subjects and reassembles them, tapping into the messiness, tensions, and trappings of visibility. In homage to each subject, Bui likens the hand-cut works to Joss paper: a ceremonial parchment burned as an ancestral offering in pan-Asian culture. To them, the act of burning symbolizes “the delicate dance between negative and positive space, presence and absence, and how so much of our formulation is through what we reject or take away.” Instead, they propose “purging societal projections of who we should be, burning away expectations, unlearning our ideas of gender and sexuality.”
