'NORIENTAL' Challenges the Stereotypes of What It Means to Be an Asian Woman

Elizabeth Wirija’s photos are nothing short of magnetic. This 23-year-old photographer left Jakarta when she was 16 years old, moving to the United States with a suitcase and a new DSLR she got as a birthday gift.

She settled in New York, finding work as a freelance graphic designer, basically working in an office as the only woman in a t-shirt in a room full of people "in suits and shit like that." It was enough to make Elizabeth ditch the corporate life and try her luck as a full-time photographer.

The first time I came across Elizabeth’s work it was a set of three photos of this stunning Asian woman dressed in yellow. The photos were a part of her ongoing project NORIENTAL, which she started in February 2017. NORIENTAL is a deep, intimate, and powerful response to the limited representation of Asian women in the mainstream American media.

If US pop culture casts Asian women as either geeks or prostitutes, then NORIENTAL is the antidote—a representation of all shades of Asian women, capturing their individual identities, talents, and experiences through photography.

I spoke with Elizabeth about her upbringing, being an artist in the social media generation, and how she uses photography to create new narratives about Asian women.

VICE: Hi Eli! What was the inspiration behind NORIENTAL?
Elizabeth Wirija: It’s sparked from a lot of different factors, but primarily it’s my dissatisfaction with the American media in general and how we’re always portrayed in a very one-dimensional narrative in a sense that in movies, we’re always acting as a sidekick to the main role. We’re always an extra, doing nerdy shit and I’m like, "What the fuck?" It’s so one-track minded.

I was thinking, as an artist, how do I change that? How do I contribute my own narrative and voice to that problem? For me, it’s by creating photos. I wanted to have the liberty to be one who writes the story.

Some Asian women are passionate about science, but some are also very passionate about the arts and the creative fields, so I just reached out to different Asian women that I came across on Instagram and Twitter and I was like, "Oh how can I photograph you and can I show you in this light?" They were always open to it.

When you scout people, do they just come with this amazing fashion sense or do you style them?
I think it’s a mixture of both, I usually show them a concept or a theme or a mood board that they can work on. I also try to incorporate like 80 percent of their voice. It’s mostly them. Some of the recent ones, Pat and Gabrielle, they’re amazing at makeup. So it’s like, how do I show that in the photos as well? I was like, "Would you be down to do your makeup for the photos?" and they were super open and the photos came out amazing. I think showing their creativity in the photographs is really important.

You sort of made your own career our of posting pictures on social media. Does that ever affect the pace of your work? Do you feel the need to create something new every day?
I definitely feel pressured in a sense, just because with this generation of social media, it’s just very instant and immediate. Everything needs to exist in a very fast pace. These past three years I’ve been creating pretty consistently. In a week, I would do two-to-three shoots, and I’m not the type of person to hold on to photographs that long. I ideate the concept and after it's done I just like to post right after I edit them.

But this year, for me, it’s more like ideating bigger projects and taking my time and involving more people in the team. In the last few years I’ve usually worked alone. It’s me and the subject. Now I wanna bring on people who are great at their field, like makeup artists, stylists, just so everything looks really good and elevated, in a sense. So I just wanna do more bigger projects, but quality projects, so it’s probably less in amount that I would post this year.

Does that make you nervous?
I guess so, just because you know people consume content at such a quick rate that I’m like "Oh, you have no patience really to wait for things to show up." But I don’t know, I think I’m fine with it. You know, the people that would wait, will wait.

What was your life in Jakarta like?
I went to an international school so I was always around a mix of cultures and I would say my parents were pretty strict in a way that after you go to school you gotta immediately get home. You can’t really go out unless you have a plan to go to a mall or some shit.

I used to live in the US as well and I am really interested in what the experience is like for you. What's it like being an Indonesian living in America?
I think being Asian in America is two different opposing sides. It's either you’re categorized as "Asian American" or you’re categorized as a "FOB" or someone from Asia. And it’s always odd to be either in one group or the other. When I say I’m from Indonesia, I think there’s a certain ignorance in a sense that some people are like, "Oh your English is so good!" thinking that, like, English isn’t a universal language. And then they’re always like, "Oh how is it back home? How is it over there?" And I’m like, Jakarta is a city too. It’s like some aspects are pretty bad, like the irrigation system and the flooding and stuff, but other than that I feel like it’s developing.

Do you keep up with what’s going on over here?
Not really. It’s usually my parents who have a WhatsApp group and they’re like posting different videos and links of what’s happening. I’ll casually scroll through sometimes, but rarely am I very involved with the politics or the news back home. But I should be.

When was the last time you were in Indonesia?
2014. But I’m planning to come back in the spring. I just applied for an artist visa and got approved in August, and I have to get the actual visa in my home country.

Have you ever felt uncertain about your immigration status in the US? Like that you weren't going to get a visa approved?
That was my feeling all of last year. I feel like once you’ve finished your OPT (a temporary work visa given to international students) you start to have that feeling of imminent doom, like "Oh no! I have to go back.’" There are more opportunities here that would be more sustainable for my career, but my parents were like "No. Do you want to be the big fish in a small pool or a small fish in a big pool?" Well, I still wanna stay here because I’m more exposed to different opportunities. So I was scrambling for my artist visa and it felt so complicated. We’re working with a lawyer and assembling all these documents. I’m happy I got it, which was such a relief for me. When I got the email I was like, ‘Yes.’ [Laughs].

Like, "Yes, I deserved this, bitch. Give it to me."
Exactly. [Laughs].

How has New York inspired you?
When I got to New York it really was a catalyst. I was surrounded with so much creative energy from the people around me. The city itself is I think very inspiring. So I started taking photography more seriously. More companies start hitting me up once I got more traction on social media. I would always post things that matter to me, the kind of stories I want to tell, and they hit me up based on that. My Muse series, my NORIENTAL series, it’s always so related to that, which I’m really proud of.

And I think NORIENTAL is a project that's going to be ongoing for the rest of my life possibly. It’s really cool to see the progress of everything.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and content.