Zelda Solomon

zeldasolomon99@gmail.com 



ig : @zeldasolo

ig : @sexyasiansinyourarea

JOYA: AiR •

Joya: AiR / Zelda Solomon / ENG —

‘The advice that was passed onto me about Joya: AiR was to not focus too much on planning something specific, but to respond once you’re there. I found that a daunting prospect because that meant I would have to relinquish a lot of control. I then wrestled with how I could even begin to bring my culturally specific practice to Velez Blanco and Joya: AiR in a way that didn’t read as ownership. Genuinely listening and responding to the surroundings and my place within them proved to be the best r
Peanut Press •

Taking Over by Zelda Solomon

In this pamphlet essay Zelda Solomon explores gender and race with a focus on the future of AI and robotics. Three characters in a film script mimicking Hollywood’s most superficial view of Asian culture play out their roles in a seedy nightclub, side by side with the author’s own studies and analyses drawn from personal experience. Solomon explores the myriad objectifying views on Asian women, a particularly current issue made more apparent during the coronavirus pandemic. All sales of this pa
agoradigital.art •

What is Fungibility? NFTs, Slavery and Mushrooms.

Dread Scott’s 2021 NFT project, White Male For Sale, consists of a 1minute 10second looped video of a typical middle-class man standing atop an auction block in Brooklyn, and the NFT was then auctioned live at Christie’s. This substitution of the historical Black body auctioned into slavery was inspired by Scott’s uneasy reaction to seeing the “F” in “NFT” bloom over the past years. As Scott puts it: “I heard the term fungible in connection with its use by scholars of the history of slavery.” He
agoradigital.art •

Sandra Araùjo aka S4RA

S4RA are a New Media artist currently taking their MA in Multimedia Art at Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. S4RA confess they’ve spent endless hours fighting monsters and strolling through mazes — a love of gaming, which shines through in their use of old-school graphics, glitch-aesthetics and the recurrent motif of the role-play. Take a look at their work and you’ll find everything from floating flip-phones to Putin riding a My Little Pony, often set against the dyn

De-mystifying NFTs and CryptoArt – A conversation with Francesca Miller

Perhaps you’ve been made aware of Non-fungible-tokens recently, or maybe you know nothing about them. To summarise *briefly*, NFTs (Non-Fungible-Tokens) are really anything digital. A video, a meme, or a piece of digital art which is embedded with a code that shows its uniqueness, kind of like a trading card – but more on that later. The exciting thing for the art world is that NFTs are finally moving into the mainstream, and there’s a lot of hype around them. “Natively Digital”, an NFT sale by

Expand beyond your container: In conversation with Witch and Astrologer, Grace McGrade

I’ve been thinking about magic recently, and where we can find it during the pandemic. In part I of this series, I looked back at my childhood spell book and realised that I used (what I thought was) magic, in order to make sense of the world and try to take back some control over it. In this instalment, I spoke with the absolutely ethereal Grace McGrade on what practising witchcraft is really like, and how we could all benefit from a little more magic in our lives. W2W: Hi Grace! Can you tell

Do you believe in magic? Exercising control during my childhood

Like many kids, I used to believe in magic. I believed in fairies and trolls, and looked for evidence of pixies in my garden; I used to think the tree spirits would talk to me if I could only figure out how to hear them, and I left notes under rocks and studied where the rain smudged the letters, in the hopes it would reveal a fairy-message. I absolutely, unequivocally, believed. My conviction for magic extended to myself, and I believed whole-heartedly that I was a witch. I don’t know where thi
Google Podcasts •

The Bosom Podcast - Ep7. Zelda Solomon: Embracing Hybridity

Today's guest is writer and performer Zelda Solomon, Co-Founder of theatre company 'Sexy Asians in Your Area'. Our conversation is a bit longer than my others, only because we spoke for hours and it became impossible to narrow it down. We chatted about hybridity and the role that plays in Asian identity, as well as working through your own understanding of yourself versus other's interpretation of that, and the importance of friends and heroes in that process. Zelda is fab, as is Sexy Asians in
Higher Self Yoga •

My First Week Meditating: Zelda Solomon

On the surface, university culture does not seem well suited to meditation. It’s full of all-nighters, parties, fleeting relationships, emotions, and high-stress work routines. Additionally, I am a university student who is filled with anxiety and of the type to think they never have enough time. I am in my final year and am making time for meditation for the first time in my life. This week is particularly stressful for work, but I am hoping to push past my resistance and practice meditation e

Growing on me: the cult appropriation of female body hair [@sophiahadjipanteli]

Dazed Digital profiled influencer Sophia Hadjipanteli, for their editorial on 2021 beauty trends, as the founder of the #UNIBROWMOVEMENT. Though her unibrow is natural, Sophia is white (born in Cyprus) and Dazed has, since, been critiqued for white-washing. The reality, for many South Asian and Middle-Eastern bodies, is that the unibrow is not a trend but something steeped in cultural history and stigma. Kurdish model, Deba, articulated the all-too-familiar patterns of appropriation – where some
16 Days Blogathon •

DAY FOURTEEN: No Problem, I understand : digital antagonism and the algorithm

Zelda Solomon discusses the problems of digital discrimination and the racist underpinnings of algorithms, through the incident with An Nguyen, a Vietnamese curator due to exhibit at the Affordable Arts Fair, only to be rejected because of the Covid-19 pandemic and its associations with ‘Asianness’. One of the first examples I saw of anti-Asian discrimination in response to corona-virus was that of An Nguyen, who is a Vietnamese curator that was due to exhibit an installation at the Affordable

AI: A white utopia

In the age of technological naivety, robots and artificial intelligence were seen as raceless and objective machines. However, as anthropomorphic technology has advanced and more and more robots are being designed, a critical question has emerged: why is AI so white? Most AI is racialised as white, from the white humanoid Sophia of Hanson Robotics; the blonde-haired blue-eyed Cindy Smart Doll, to the dawn of AI Kismet, with its white colour, blue eyes, and light eyebrows. We see it in popular c

Dash & Lily : Showing interracial Japanese-American love on screens [#DashandLily]

Dash & Lily is the new Netflix series starring Austin Abrams and Midori Francis, and I am not ashamed to say I absolutely fell in love the first time I watched it. Based on the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, the eight episode series follows the relentlessly cheery Lily and the satirical holiday-hating Dash as they run around New York, writing each other clues in a red notebook. It’s about young love, getting out of your comfort zone, and Christmas magic. Its exactly the type of escapist
Apple Podcasts •

‎Artists' Impressions: Episode One: Sexy Asians dying to be on your podcast. on

Laura chats to Camilla Anvar and Zelda Solomon - the two halves of theatre company/creative dream team Sexy Asians in Your Area Dying to Meet You who recently premiered their debut film at RUMAH Fest. The conversation spans British Asian Identities, Covid-19, the influence of TickTock and papier mache. Trigger warning: Racism and racist violence. Artists and works mentioned: Camilla's and Zelda's film can be found here: https://www.sexyasians.co.uk/watch See more of RUMAH Fest here: https
mxogyny •

Interviewed by Mxogony : ‘are you a porn category, or are you white?’ a conversation with SexyAsiansInYourArea on performing East Asian femininity —

In their short scratch performance, Sexy Asians In Ur Area Dying 2 Meet U, Camilla Anvar and Zelda Solomon explore tropes, language and what it means to be both sexy and Asian within and against the circumscriptions of Asian femininity delimited in theatre and beyond. Deputy Editor-in-Chief Michelle Firth chats to them about their show, East Asian representation and the complexities of finding a place in desirability amidst the perils of self-objectifying and fetishizing. Can you tell me a litt
Sexy Asians In Your Area Dying 2 Meet U •

Sexy Asian In Ur Area short film

Commissioned film for RUMAH festival online with myself sexyasiansinurarea co-founder Camilla Anvar. Explores the performance of East Asian femininity through scratch performances and the digital archetype. This inaugural online festival is supported by Arts Council England #NationalLottery Project Grant, Rich Mix, Ignite Fund, Metroland Cultures Fund & Society for Theatre Research Covid-19 support grants
CRXSS Magazine •

Conditions of Acceptance

One of the most popular Asian stereotypes is the doctor. Often depicted as calm, collected, with robotic-like intelligence, the Asian doctor swoops in to save the day. However, even when 20% of total National Health Service health occupations in the United Kingdom are BAME (Black, Asian, Minority, Ethnic), and the 44% of BAME medical roles specifically are mostly Asian and Chinese, the stereotype of the Asian doctor has not prevailed in the fight against the Coronavirus. Far from celebrated, Asi
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