BEING MIXED – A VISUAL GUIDE

Being Mixed is Beth Chin’s visual guide to the foundations of multiracial and ethnic culture. This nine page artwork uses the basic elements of graphic design to simplify the complexities behind race and ethnicity within the mixed culture.

Due to a dream Chin had to establish an internationally connected multiracial and ethnic cultural centers, she began researching this topic two years ago and just this year began the multicultural art collective, All Related.

Creating Being Mixed was apart of a long term effort to find a way to visually and cross- culturally represent mixed culture.

About the Author & Artist

Beth Chin | ellisebastian.com | @ellisebastian

On the 28th of February I left Germany, where I normally live and work, to come back home to Chicago and visit my family during the spring break. It was a two week visit until the CO-VID 19 outbreak began. Due to my asthma making me more high risk than most people my age, I decided to stay with my parents.

During this time I began to realize the connections that I had with my family and roots and how those slowly began to disintegrate the longer I was working abroad in Germany. The last time I had visited was one year ago for the funeral of my dad’s younger brother and the year before that, for my brother’s wedding. In this time I began to realize the time and how diferently that felt to those who stayed in Chicago. One of my cousins even considered me the German cousin, which hit a very sore point due to my multiracial background. Although, almost all of my cousins are multiracial, I happen to be visually more on the white side of that scale. I have always heard things like this from others. But from family, it hit hard. Once the quarantine started, I immediately began to study Chinese.

But, the further I studied Chinese, the more I felt distant from my roots. I was advised by family to learn Mandarin. Though, those of my family that spoke Chinese spoke Toi Shan. The further I studied, the more I felt even distant from my family as though I was learning the wrong culture. I had no one to speak this language to.

Going back to a multiracial identity was the only was I could get out of the feeling of this space in between. I shared many emotional talks with both my parents during the last two months, took all the research I had gathered over the past two years, communicated with several online multiracial communities, and created this small visual guide on multiracial identity. The goal was to set the stage and get the foundations covered so that from here on our multiracial and ethnic community can move forward to achieving higher goals, such as ending racism.