What could you create, imagine, with no boundaries?

In the early 2000s, hamsa fae (who uses lowercase lettering in her name) recalls a kind of collective thrill that came with the arrival of a “Paris by Night” DVD. The Vietnamese musical variety show began production and filming in the 1980s and became a popular and beloved expression of, and connection to, Vietnamese art and culture that had a particular resonance with fae.

“I feel like my life and my work as an artist is informed by my life as a transwoman, as a Vietnamese first-generation American growing up in Los Angeles. In the home, the first memory of art was through ‘Paris by Night.’ This was such a huge phenomenon in the 2000s, how we would have these DVDs that would come out and we would sit down for these two hours and watch these concerts, and the icons that birthed from this really created a core memory of the way performance and ritual is offered,” she says. “In the diaspora, especially the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) diaspora, there’s the ‘model minority’ myth, the pressure to be the doctor, the pharmacist, the engineer; never the artist, never the person working with aesthetics or visual culture or media. Somehow, ironically, we had ‘Paris by Night’ growing up. Why can’t we be included in that?”

Alongside fae’s work as an artist, is cultivating that inclusion, which is seen in her...