Unpeeling the Layers of Chinoiserie

A recent spiritual coaching session with a lovely client got me realizing that this brand I am curating is more than what I thought it was. To be very clear, by this time I am fully aware that this brand Chinoiserie Ascension is not an appendage of mine, but its own separate living concept that has decided to select me as its curator and steward.

I thought that word ‘Chinoiserie’ was calling me to serve the Asian-Anglo diaspora and more specifically, the Chinese-Anglo diaspora. I became worried because I did not want to exclude anyone from my work or service because I narrowed down my content and focus. I tend to worry about that a lot, not having people feel left out. It comes from the lived experience of being left out a lot: personally, familially, culturally, and societally. Feeling left out has made me feel like other people forgot that I mattered. And what a strange experience it is, to clock that other people acknowledge that you are living and breathing right in front of them, but their schema of you exists without thoughts, without whims, and imaginings.

I have since been made aware that I leave no one out, because the frequency of Chinoiserie transcends race and culture. Chinoiserie speaks to the artist within that has for so long been told by others that they are merely decoration. Chinoiserie speaks of the lines, elements, and stories of people that just are, even if it defies and confounds the better thoughts of the mainstreams.

It got me to think about how many artists are visionaries and what a painful experience it can be. What artists perceive can often times be light years or dimensions away from what the common populace will notice. And when there are no known words to describe the vision and no ears willing to listen, the soul does start to wither away, silently wishing that they could not see the beauty that seems only they are able to comprehend.

So they create art. They do not explain their art, because they have tried to do that before and it didn’t work. Creating art helps the artist to remember that their perception and divine channel is real. There is something out there. Something more than the boxes and cyclical suffering that has been going on for millennia.

I think Chinoiserie has a lot of surprises to show me. For starters, I believe in the coming years, I’m going to be so amazed at how many people from all different backgrounds and walks of life have felt like decoration. It’s not just Chinese Americans. But the archetypal experience of being pulled by two very proud cultures creates the chemistry for Chinoiserie to exist as a concept. When neither mainstream faction will be dominated by the other, the existence of the hybrid will congeal. From the creation of hybrid identities and the experiences of the in-between, we infinitely multiply our understanding and experience of this human, this intergalactic, this cosmic landscape of wonder.