Vela Xiyuan Zhu

Capstone Project: Performing Belongings: Nikki S. Lee and her Chameleon Identity

This project examines Nikki S. Lee's Projects series as a form of photographic self-performance that interrogates identity, belonging, and racial legibility with American cultural landscapes. Through immersive participation in diverse subcultural communities, ranging from hip-hop to yuppie social groups, Lee transforms her appearance, behavior, and social positioning to test the permeability of identity. Drawing on performance studies frameworks, this project argues that Lee's work does not simply represent identity as fluid, but actively stages it as a process of negotiation shaped by visibility and social recognition.

Rather than claiming authenticity, Lee's performances reveal the tension of "blending in," exposing how belonging is both constructed and constrained by racialized and cultural expectations. By analyzing Lee's ethnographic method, snapshot aesthetics, and ethical tension, I position her work as a critical exploration of how the identity is performed as an unstable condition.

What inspired your project?

This project grew out of my interest in performance as something that happens in everyday life, through the way we present ourselves and adapt to environments. In my Performance Studies work, I've been particularly drawn to how identity is performed through repetition and context. Nikki S. Lee's work resonates with my own experience navigating different cultural and social spaces. Her Projects series feels like a experiment: what does it mean to "fit in," and how far can performance go? This project explores this tension between authenticity and construction. How much of who we are is real? How much is performed?

Bio

Vela Xiyuan Zhu is a passionate artist, performer and writer. Her academic work focuses on Global Asian diasporic performance and Asian American theater, with broader interests in visual and popular culture, race, and translation. She is particularly interested in how performance functions as a space where identity, representation, and belonging are negotiated across transnational contexts. In addition to her academic work, Vela is an actor, dancer and theater practitioner. Her creative work informs her scholarship, and she approaches performance as both an artistic and social process through which histories of migration and cultural memory are embodied and expressed.