Interview with Leanne Choi
Reimagining home through nostalgia, heritage, and the diaspora through fashion and art.
Edited by Natacha Manomaiphan and Dan Truong
Leanne Choi
TRS: Pack up and Go, 2023, fashion, textile, and object
Photography by Lucas Dawson
Talent: Jenny Guo
Head stylist: Karinda Mutabazi
Please introduce yourself and the kind of art you create.
My name is Leanne Choi, and I am a Chinese-Australian born and raised in Naarm/Melbourne. I am a bilingual (byelingual*) interdisciplinary designer interested in fashion, textiles, art, object, and publication design. I often draw from personal experience, nostalgia, and observations to explore fashion and diaspora. After my studies in Master of Fashion Design, I became intrigued in representing and re-presenting Asian-Australian diaspora culture through performative fashion.
*Byelingual: When you speak two languages but start losing vocabulary in both of them.
Growing up as a Chinese-Australian, how have your cultural roots shaped your understanding of home?
To me, home is a memory and site of identity and belonging. It includes Australia, Hong Kong, and other places I have visited. Growing up in Naarm/Melbourne, my cultural experience has felt varied, confused, and sometimes diluted. My understanding of home involves following traditional Chinese customs, values, and language, but sometimes these ideas are broken and compromised to fit Australia (such as Australian weather and accessibility). Everyday moments like taking my shoes off indoors, or sticking to ‘Made in Japan’ products, are things I learned from home. I’m unsure if these practices speak to my cultural roots, but maybe it does as an Asian-Australian.
Leanne Choi
TRS: Pack up and Go, 2023, fashion, textile, and object
Photography by Griffin Simm
What role does Naarm/Melbourne play in your creative process, and how does the city feel like home to you?
I was born and raised in Naarm/Melbourne, a place closest to home. The everyday experiences from my home and conversations with friends and family played a key role in my creative process. It started from my Honours project, during lockdown where I was restricted to use materials from home. I found a wardrobe of grandma’s clothing and textiles she sent from Hong Kong to mum in the ‘90s to early 2000s. This collection was filled with memories I had forgotten, teaching me who I am through the language of clothing archetypes, colour, and prints. From this, I learned the term ‘diaspora’ and how ‘home’ was related.
