Alec Dai is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His photography practice centers on exploring the intersection of queer and Asian-American identities. He has worked on the project ‘Offered Tenderness,’ advised by photographer Danna Singer, where he traveled across the U.S. from Butte, Montana (where early Chinese railroad workers migrated) to Hartford, Connecticut (where author Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ takes place), seeking remnants of his queer Asian identity in this country. The notion of migration in many Asian-American lives and the transformation many queer individuals go through continue to be topical in his work today.

Dai is currently working on the series, “My American Portraits,” informed by his upbringing in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, home to a large population of immigrants from Guangdong, China (where his parents immigrated from). “My American Portraits” is a series of staged portraits that uses the queer concept of “coming out” to proudly display the immigrant Chinese family. These photos are a conversation between his queer and Chinese-American identities. The intent is to stage and capture queer joy and domesticity in conversation with immigrant artifacts and elements of the Chinese diaspora so that he, and others like him, can always see the beauty in what they often seek to hide.

Alec Dai obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University.  His work has most recently shown at “(In) Directions: Queerness in Contemporary Chinese Photography” at Eli Klein Gallery.

IG: @cry.dai