Connecting with Diana Oh as she caps off her yearlong artist-in-community residency at American Repertory Theater.
By Morgan Hume for Improper Bostonian
Over the past year, artist Diana Oh has been popping around Boston, creating installation art in untraditional spaces like Harvard Yard, the Boston Public Library, and the ICA to celebrate queer and transgender people of color, as part of her yearlong residency with the American Repertory Theater. Oh had us spellbound as we caught up with her before Clairvoyance—a series of concerts, installations and dance parties—that runs through the 27 and culminates with a tree planting ceremony Sunday, April 28 at the Arnold Arboretum to celebrate her year of creation.
In what ways does show help celebrate queer and trans people of color?
What I don’t want it to do is treat marginalized voices in marginalized ways anymore. I’m so done with that narrative. What I’m so excited about and what I feel like this concert does do is that it celebrates it. You know, it’s easy to kind of feel siloed and feel very alone or distanced from society. I think in putting together this concert and doing this work—it’s about celebration so that it can feel like expansion rather than “let me just shrivel up and hide” … This is all about expansion and breathing and letting the wings spread. And the power of joy and the power of pleasure and the power of desire.
You include entries from your personal journals in some of your songs. What was it like to be so vulnerable and open by including these excerpts?
I don’t know any other way than to be open and vulnerable. That is what art is for me. How I feel seen is when I am seeing my vulnerability and when I can share it with an audience and they catch me. It’s this literal “you catch me as I am falling” feeling, and it makes me feel very nurtured and alive. And that’s how I know I’m in this space of living in my specific truth of career choice. So definitely each of these songs, I’m also recognizing—and this is something I’ve learned over the course of putting this concert on—I sing for my feeling as much for yours. Even though I offer this music to you, when I sing these lyrics, it also feeds me. It’s also doing something to me to like transforming the molecules in my body and my anxiety. And all the things that make being alive really fucking hard and also really freaking beautiful.
How is this upcoming concert different from the other parts of your A.R.T. residency?
I think it’s different because [in] a lot of these installations and these performances—like for the public library I was painting on the floor—there was a lot of interaction. … It also feels like a celebration of not only the work but a celebration of this way of life. As somebody who has gone through what I’ve gone through in life, the only way I was able to heal myself was by prioritizing mental wellness. Prioritizing mediation and exercise and self-care and all these things. And I think when you see the concert, you’ll be able to feel the depth of that. … I’m going to explore my path and my history and my ancestry… I’m going to use this time to strengthen my intuition and my gut and my feelings. And that’s why music is so magical and so powerful for me, because that is what music should be. It is all intuition. It is all gut. It’s just so rare that we get to connect with the gut and the instincts and the heart without such a calculated effort to get there. I think what’s fun about the concert too is that it’s a plethora of talent. It’s a plethora of sound and images. So, it just kind of feels like I get to really breathe into this and spread my wings without shame, without being so afraid of my own voice. Without being like, “Oh, I’m so sorry for existing.” I’m just gonna be and share from a place of pleasure and joy.
