Aileen Ye
6min mins
beast follows a dreamscape nightmare about the fragile complexities grappled within diasporic Asian cultures and identities. Embodied and expressed through a martial arts inspired dance-fight between a traditional lion dancer and modern queer dancer, this film symbolically highlights diasporic identity displacement and coming to terms with one’s own cultural grief.
The figures symbolise the clash between modernity and tradition, colonised and imported heritage, and the feeling of cultural anxiety. The combination of contemporary and martial arts movement represent both entities seeking to co-exist as each other’s yin-yang and to find balance within the isolation they both experience.
![Queer East -](https://queereast.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/BEAST_STILL3_AILEENYE-3000x1698.jpg)
![Queer East -](https://queereast.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/BEAST_STILL1_AILEENYE-3000x1690.jpg)
Aileen Ye is an award-winning Irish-Chinese filmmaker and visual artist from Dublin. Currently, she is based in the Netherlands. Her works reveal entangled narratives and the complex social structures within Asian diasporas, memories, and heritage.