Young Creators Art spotlight: Arianna Louie

Sixteen-year-old Chinese-Korean American Arianna Louie makes art in many mediums but often gravitates towards painting. “I love to incorporate my cultures and my experiences into any medium of work but especially painting.” Her submission for Young Creators Project began as a self-portrait of her current 16-year-old self. Yet, Louie collaged an enlarged photograph of herself as a toddler over her painted face. The image is sliced in half, revealing her painted portrait below—in places, eyes, mouths and noses of her young and current self are doubled to express a fractured multiplicity.

Louie talks about her work as a reflection on the time and space between the two portraits, and the collage also speaks to the complexities of our inner worlds—each of our identities is unique and shaped by our family, experiences, and culture. In creating a piece that looked back at her former self, Louie’s work also speaks to the larger diaspora, and celebrates multiplicity. “Though I'm not sure what the future will bring to me,” Louie says, “I know that surely I want to work for my communities and use my art as a means to accomplish that.”

Arianna Louie’s self portrait for Young Creators Project looks back at her former self and explores multiplicity.