Who am I and what's my art about

Mountain Trek 2018

Who the fuck is lotus?
A little over a year ago, my academic life as a graduate student in the humanities was pretty much in shambles. The American university I had been attending since 2006 shut my small Asian Studies program down and I found myself stranded (but happily so) in Europe. I spent many aimless hours around this time on Instagram. Before my ill-fated decision to enter academia, I had wanted to become a cartoonist and animator, and had always been something of an amateur talent at drawing and painting. I also always had the nagging feeling that I should have gone into art school rather than the humanities. As luck would have it, it was precisely at this time when my future as a graduate seemed utterly doomed that I discovered the world of vaporwave and glitch art.

I had been aware of vaporwave as a genre since 2014 when a friend from Chicago started sending me some random bandcamp links for music to listen to. I hadn't really done any digital art since my teenage cartooning days and a few fleeting attempts at making web comics a bit later on. It was something I'd return to every now and then, but my artistic side mostly remained dormant during grad school, stifled by applications, obligations, and all the hoops you're told you have to jump through to achieve academic success.

But during my aimless Instagram surfing at this time of feeling completely adrift, I realized I wanted to get back into creating art, and that I really had nothing left to lose. The ethos and spirit behind vaporwave art connected with me from early on, and I had the feeling glitch and vaporwave were the closest things the 2010s had to offer as the defining comprehensive style of this time, encompassing art, fashion, music, and lifestyle. Moreover, the art invited amateur participation. So I opened up GIMP and started making images.

The response on Instagram was sudden, surprising, and welcoming. Before I knew it, I was collabing with other artists and connecting with individuals from all over the globe who has taken up the vaporwave style and put their own spin on it. My world had changed.

And what are you doing on Steemit?
Late in 2017, Hive account@ausxen , who is a fellow artist and founder of the Vapor Vigilante collective on Instagram of which I'm also a member, got me to join Steemit. I was intrigued by the concept behind Steemit and thought it would be a good place to try curating my own digital art from Instagram, picking some of my favorite pieces and posting them on here with a bit more commentary than I am able to on IG. I want to give more of the ideas behind the pieces and also say something more about glitch art and vaporwave, and what they mean for pop culture, what they have to say about contemporary society.

Or if that sounds dumb, I'll just post pictures of boobies.