When Worlds Collide: A Marriage, Two Truths, and a Lie, Oh My!
My 2025 finished on a few noteworthy notes, one of which was covering what I thought was a wedding, and what I would come to find out would not just be one, but two, and more. The pairs of fiancées were introduced with a game of two truths and a lie, a prompt I hate being asked of because I can never think clever enough on my feet. The impromptu caught Dong Yuxiang and Yixue Li, an artist couple of eight years, off guard, turning the jest into a genuine confession of advice: It takes two people who work hard at sustaining love to do it. They had heard there was going to be a wedding, so they got their marriage license the day before, and took the opportunity to join in on the occasion. I think about love and I wonder about what’s real and fake. In qualifying a truth or a lie, who’s really to say which is which?
We were all witnesses to the two-for-one wedding at an event held “in honor of Cuffing Szn,” Saturday, December 20th, whose contents of “Speeddating! A Marriage Ceremony! Readings! Flirty Fun!” seemed to guide the guests into collective confusion, for no one knew what to expect, but the title made sure to deliver itself on all counts. This multitudinous celebration of life, love, and pursuits of happiness, was hosted by two of the brides themselves, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, EIC of Cultbytes and Xuezhu Jenny Wang, EIC of Impulse at Accent Sisters 重音社, a bilingual bookstore led by Jiaoyang Li. A mouth full of a collab! It was discombobulated and sweet.
Jiaoyang, who’s also officiating in a white gown stamped in the center by a thin red cross, says she got her marriage license to marry two of her gay friends during the pandemic, when this was a more difficult feat than usual. It was an action done in the name of friendship, love, and “just because it’s so much fun.” The pairs kiss and hug, becoming one for a moment after what must have been an “I do.”
“No ‘we are gathered here today’ or anything,” a woman wearing gold says to my left while papers are being signed. Katya Grokhovsky, the founding director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial, a point at which many of the collaborators and attendees are collectively intertwined, signs her name on the dotted line.“Who’s going to be our second witness?” Anna Mikaela yells into the crowd who have lost themselves amongst each other. The same shining woman, Christen Clifford, catches her question like a bouquet, raises her right hand, and waves.
The magazine 4N is advertised in the intermission. It’s a publication that serves as a place for international artists to demonstrate examples of press coverage to prove their validity for representation and grants, a so-called “evidence” of existence. As weak as the written word sometimes feels, it’s not.
The papers were signed and it was official. Dong Yuxiang and Yixue Li, and Anna Mikaela and Jenny Wang were wed respectively. Then, the readings began.
Sofia Thiệu D’Amico was asked by Do Tuong Linh which identity she chooses to call herself by in a script read aloud between the two. This, she answers, “depends on the immigration officer,” “depends on the dinner table,” “depends on who’s angry,” and I guess it really does all depend on where one stands. “Do you ever feel at home?” Sofia asks. “Only temporarily,” Do Tuong responds, “usually at airport cafes, where everyone is equally suspicious.” What counts if it’s all performance? The women ring a bell to signal when theirs is done.
Jin Jin Xu presents “Ping Pong Diplomacy” to a YouTube video titled What Are You Afraid Of? which displays text across the screen in a similar manner of the DVD logo:
US BANS PERFORMERS WHO RECENTLY WENT TO CHINA and CHINA ANNOUNCED THAT IT WILL EXPEL AMERICAN JOURNALISTS.
The work on view was made as a collective between her and Jiaoyang between the United States and China during the tumult of 2020, a relationship still, if not always rocky. The title, as much of a symbol as it is a literal telling, is inspired by the 1971 spectacle that opened a door between the two countries when a Chinese team captain gave an American player a ride to the international table tennis tournament in Japan, an act of a similarly ideological and real olive branch passed over the net, between countries on opposite sides of the same table.
In terms of the performance, it’s hitting a ping pong ball with a paddle haphazardly alone in a dark room. Unlike the very real implications of what the act represents, this is fun, and Jin Jin is laughing too, inciting the audience to sing along with her to a song in a language I don’t know, but whose melody I can still hum. Sports and Politics: One tries to leave it all on the field. Diplomacy is a game of ping pong, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and—
Anna Ting Möller reads a story she titles Perfect Strangers that describes her trip back to New York from California on a Greyhound bus that “carried connotations of freedom.” She had too many suitcases full of art materials to take a plane, and anyway, how would one explain the luggage full of fermenting kombucha to TSA? It was a journey like most, solitary, though peppered by moments of solace shared with strangers. I can’t help but giggle when she says she cried upon seeing the sign to New Jersey, because I totally get it, having done the same on multiple occasions myself.
The event contains, and therefore provokes, thoughts about diaspora, identities, and belonging, as my country is inciting a subtle war on its own territory for matters of all the same. Between the ICE raids and deportations, travel bans, constant revoking of visas, citizenships, and rights, Donald Trump’s presidency continues to threaten and violate the safety and validity of what was once an American dream ripe with promise, now rotten. The current administration continues to terrorize for the sake of “America comes first,” like the country wasn’t built by and of immigrants, slaves, and “illegals.” In this continuation of “Us” vs. “Them,” it’s good to be reminded there’s no difference but a name, whose definition is our decision.
In the last act I see before I leave, I’m asked by curator Chiarina Chen to “think of one word that makes dating work in New York,” after being instructed to close my eyes and meditate on the feeling of its frustrations. I feel the agita of all my previous lovers as usual but don’t think of a word until a man standing above my seat asks if I’m going to participate as the woman behind the mic starts counting down from three. My first thought? Tolerance, in every sense of the word, for better or for worse, and I think you know the rest.
A version of this article was also published in IMPULSE.
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