“Navigating Identity and Absurdity: A Conversation with Letao”

In a world where ideology lags behind the rapid acceleration of technology, Letao clears a path to understanding our fluctuating identities. Contextualizing broader social themes through her personal experiences, her journey is stitched with feelings of the Chinese American diaspora, childlike wonder, and the absurdities within today’s mundane.

To begin with Letao, can you please take us through your social and cultural background and influence? How did filmmaking happen to you?

“Paper remembers in creases.”

My grandpa taught me how to fold his origami tower when I was four years old. He was a big thinker, I assume partly because my family had to be particularly resourceful through China’s Great Famine.

At six, my mother remarried and tore us to America for the promise of a better future. There is a before and an after, so my memory is sparkling yet unreachable. I was proficient at math for a first grader, so much so that even Mrs. Winter thought I was cheating. But within a few months, my English was fluent, which made me realize how quickly I’d grown. This early cultural estrangement set the tone for the identity I would carry in my art—a sense of always searching for a home that felt just out of reach.

Q: What’s the story behind your particular thematic approach to subjects and ideas?

Why is absurdity something that needs to be explored?

I reject a singular visual style, but I am not anti-aesthetic. My focus is on choosing the medium that best communicates the story, whether that’s a YouTube video essay, ASMR, 3D animation, or printing on slabs of meat—whatever works best.

Absurdity fascinates me because it forces us to confront ourselves, to see things like emojis, those mundane symbols of our cyborgian reality, with fresh eyes. How can I make you look at an emoji as if you’ve never seen one before? And what can this reveal about us? That’s thechallenge!

In her creative endeavors, Letao embraces absurdity not as a dismissal of seriousness but as a lens through which we confront the ironies of existence. Her work, ranging from digital art to experimental film, is a playground where nothing is sacred, and everything is a tool for reflection.

Q: How does your need to build metamodern stories serve your motives and objectives?

Building metamodern stories allows me to bring understanding to places one wouldn’t think needed it. Rapid acceleration leads to existential doubt and so demand for the appearance of certainty. We want someone else to spoon-feed us what is good and bad. But I prefer to explore the space in between optimism and pessimism, utopia and doomsday prepping because life israrely so black and white. Within this in between space, I am to offer solace to our new ageanxieties.

Letao’s work oscillates between optimism and existential dread, often exploring the contradictions of our modern lives. Her approach is deeply rooted in metamodernism, where irony and sincerity coexist, offering a space for us to wrestle with the nuances of our collective anxieties.

Q: Please take us through the ecosystem that you work through which helps you build your projects with set intentions.

In filmmaking, my creative process starts with a question. I explore through reading, journaling, filming, and editing—often in a non-linear, iterative fashion akin to a research project. The goal isn’t to answer the question definitively but to derive meaning from the exploration itself.

Letao thrives in the ambiguity of her process, preferring questions to answers and allowing each project to reveal its own purpose. Her filmmaking is an ongoing dialogue with her audience, one that doesn’t promise clarity but insists on engagement.

Q: What are your intentions with your craft? What are you looking forward to achieving and excited about?

While my identity as a Chinese American has deeply influenced my interest in the hypermodern, I haven’t fully explored being Chinese American directly. I’m excited about unraveling that. Having been in London for nearly two years, I’m ready to make it feel like home. I’ve been making work like crazy this year and have moved all around, I’m looking for moments of celebration and to feel settled. I want to be more involved in my community and collaborating with other artists.

As she looks ahead, Letao is focused on deepening her connection with her roots while continuing to experiment with new mediums and ideas. With an upcoming exhibition of herinstallation film, “Mid-itation” with International Body of Art London, she is poised to enter a new chapter of creative exploration, embracing the balance between reflection and reinvention.