Multimedia artist Kevin Yatsu’s (b. 1996) explores diasporic identity construction through local means of shared internet personas. Utilizing various online platforms, Yatsu’s work utilizes a self-described “shitty aesthetic” to complicate his created characters.



Similar to Tseng and Lum, Yatsu’s work appropriates popular culture to produce distributable art.  His latest work continues discussions of agency and appropriation while simultaneously challenging notions of the Other online. Yatsu’s 2019 work “Something Presidential” takes form as an online musical starring American actor, meme star, and resident sadboi “Ryan Gosling.” “Something Presidential” comments on tokenism showcased in American Broadway theater, labeling the art venue as emblematic of larger complications between the oppressor/oppressed. In “Something Presidential,” Yatsu places himself in a position of power to recognize the tokenism exhibited in contemporary theater. Thus, “Something Presidential” offers an opportunity for Yatsu, a fourth-generation Japanese American, to claim a different type of truth. Yatsu achieves this by situating himself as Ryan Gosling, a cultural figure emblematic of white privilege. In doing so, Yatsu complicates contemporary notions of the Other and constructions of truth. Yatsu’s embodiment of Ryan Gosling in “Something Presidential” operates in a space that questions what it means to identify as a person of color amidst diasporic expectations of assimilation.



Mao’s Meme Company. is honored to advertise this event, self-labeled as the most popular online musical, on our page.