Creative Agency
My Name Story
Do you belong to your name?
My Name Story
Do you belong to your name?
My Name Story is a portrait-video project that examines the AANHPI experience through the lens of our names at the intersection of race, gender and class. This project explores themes of identity, belonging, and reclamation in a country that oftentimes labels AANHPIs as the other and perpetual foreigner. The project includes women from different generations, ethnicities and experiences who have had, at one point or another, struggles with their names and the meanings attached to them.
The Stories
Participants of My Name Story were asked to share the stories of their names through portraits taken with a photograph of themselves that represent the story of their name. They wrote letters to the version of themselves that they were photographed with to help them process and reflect on their name stories. Video interviews were conducted with each participant. Click on an image to experience the name stories.
SIEMNY
RYA
MARIDELLE
JEANNIE
GINA
ANNAH
XIN
About Us
Judy Lee
Judy Lee is the creator of My Name Story and began this project when she started thinking about her own name story and how it’s been a reflection of her struggles and journey with identity and selfhood in the context of larger questions about race and gender. She started the project to help her process her own name and to create visibility for a common, yet not well known, AANHPI experience. She believes in the transformative power of stories, especially those told by the marginalized, and the importance of telling them in our own voices, rather than through an outside narrator. She is a Narrative Artist of social justice focused projects that center community and healing for women and BIPOC.
Tatyana Kurepina
Tatyana Kurepina is documentary filmmaker who works with local artists to strengthen their connection to the community around them through visual storytelling. She became involved with My Name Story project not only because of her own experiences grappling with her identity as an immigrant, but because she had a deep sense of urgency to help document stories that have been untold for so long. She will be shooting and editing a documentary about Judy’s name story, while weaving in the stories of the women interviewed for this project. She hopes this documentary encourages all of us to examine the complexities of our identity and how we move through the world.
