In requiem for my damsel, the bottom figure is not weaponized in this traditional sense. Instead the bottom figure is empowered through their own bondage, a self- tying and self-induced passiveness (refusing to perform labor, a protest, a pillow princess) that queers gendered hierarchies in an ultimate self-animalization.
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The train in requiem for my damsel is a direct nod to early-nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant labor on the Transcontinental Railroad, and its contemporary consequences: a long-term history of exploitating AAPI migrant labor, such as in mining, agriculture, railroad construction, and prostitution, coupled with the existential threat yellow fever poses to white livelihood (health and capital) that fuels modern-day acts of racism and hate.
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The masculine/feminine triangulated power structure set up by huang in requiem for my damsel continues to play out in the two figure’s drag and dress. The top figure wears a cowboy hat, white tanktop and jeans—an outfit materially and historically rooted in the development of fabrics for labor and working-class wear in the late-nineteenth-century American west. The top’s outfit is queer-coded in its simplicity reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain and gay cowboy culture—already hinting towards themes of sodomy and bottom-culture in huang’s work. The top’s nipples are visibly erect in the tank top, pointing towards an eroticism in the act of self-bondage, a type of masturbation and self-pleasure. The bottom figure wears a black embroidered cheongsam, a dress style popularized by early-twentieth-century Chinese women, specifically Shanghainese women, with complimenting black cowboy boots. The visual binarism of top over bottom and therefore masculine over feminine, further depicts a racial power hierarchy of “West” over “East,” within the material history of each avatar’s outfits, the silk and jean fabrics. - A.C. Smith