On Thursday, March 7, Wellesley’s Southeast Asian Student Association (SEASA), in collaboration with the Advisor to Students of Asian Descent, Karen Shih, hosted a talk by multidisciplinary artist and keynote speaker Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya. The talk was the first in a series of events organized to commemorate Asian Pacific Islander (API) month and saw participation from students and faculty members from different pan-Asian organizations and departments across campus. 

The planning for the talk began back in February of this year when Shih envisioned a potential collaboration and contacted SEASA Presidents Moji Niyamanusorn ’25 and Van An Trinh ’24 to host the event collectively. 

Speaking of the motivation behind organizing the talk, Niyamanusorn expressed her vision for this year’s API month which was focused on highlighting minority Asian voices and why that is important in the larger context of celebrating the work of Asian artists. 

“​​I really liked the theme of [Phingbodhipakkiya’s] artwork about ‘where we belong.’ Especially for this API month, we tried to highlight the minorities in the Asian community. I’m Thai as well and when I first came to [the US], a lot of people told me that you actually don’t look like you’re Thai, you look like you’re Japanese or Korean, or Chinese. And I had to tell them that I am not,” Niyamanusorn commented. 

Niyamanusorn further elaborated on why Phingbodhipakkiya’s story was crucial to enhancing the visibility of Thai artists and for kicking off this year’s API month. 

“Having Amanda here felt really nice because usually when we think of Asians we usually just think of the three East Asian [groups] … the media tries to portray it’s either Japanese or Chinese or sometimes Korean, but other than that, there is not really much. So having Amanda here really helps increase the visibility of the minorities who are often forgotten,” Niyamanusorn said. 

The talk was also instrumental in spreading the word about SEASA on the Wellesley campus which often gets lost amongst the wide range of Asian-spanning organizations that exist on campus. 

“An event as large-scale as this one helps to get the name of SEASA out too, because as compared to other Asian orgs we are considered to be one of the smaller ones. Sometimes it makes me really sad when I meet another Southeast Asian person on campus and they tell me they never knew that SEASA even existed,” Niyamanusorn said. 

“If you notice [Phingbodhipakkiya’s] Instagram handle is ‘a long last name’ and I really relate to that because my last name is also very long like hers. We had a talk about how I am sometimes ashamed when someone struggles to pronounce my last name and I try to tell them that they can just call me Moji N and they don’t have to try to pronounce the whole thing. But I know that we shouldn’t be made to feel that way,” Niyamanusorn commented. 

The talk began with Phingbodhipakkiya narrating her experience of growing up in the United States as the daughter of Thai and Indonesian immigrants. Phingbodhipakkiya, who was a neuroscience major back in college, reflected on the process of transitioning to the arts from a conventional STEM discipline and having this conversation with their parents to whom this came as a surprise. This was followed by an overview of some of Phingbodhipakkiya’s most notable works which span sculpture, large-scale murals, installation and public art campaigns. 

Phingbodhipakkiya spoke of an experience that was transformative in its impact on them choosing the themes that they focus their artwork on. More specifically, they touched upon how the Southeast Asian community is, more often than not, expected to not ‘take up space.’ This further underscores the importance of having their artwork displayed in locations where people from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds gather. Phingbodhipakkiya’s work received  such recognition when their public art campaign of 2020 titled “I Still Believe in our City” depicting men and women of Asian and Pacific Islander descent was displayed on billboards across New York City. 

Phingbodhipakkiya concluded by narrating their experience of traveling to Thailand and learning first-hand the traditional weaving practices that have been passed down through generations of Thai women or “aunties.” To Phingbodhipakkiya, learning from these women was also an opportunity to reconnect with their cultural roots. 

In the years to come, Niyamanusorn wishes for API month celebrations to continue to be all-encompassing of the diversity within the larger Asian community and for SEASA to play an integral role in amplifying Southeast Asian voices both on and off campus.