Image: Installation view, Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics, Queens Museum. Photo credit: Hai Zhang.
LIVE PRIDEFULLY: Love and Resilience within Pandemics - The Exhibition
Photo by TrinCity Photos
Caribbean Equality Project
est. Queens, NY, 2015
Rohan Zhou-Lee, Live Pridefully, 2021
Digital Print
Photography by Christian Thane
Courtesy of Caribbean Equality Project
Rohan Zhou-Lee (They/Siya/祂(Tā) is a Jamaican-Chinese-Indian-Filipino dancer, writer, and organizer. Zhou-Lee is the founder of the Blasian March, a solidarity movement for Black, Asian and Blasian communities through education on parallel struggles with racial injustice and mutual celebration.
Using Blasian March resources, they co-organized with a team of women of color the End Violence Towards Asians United Against White Nationalism rally on February 20, 2021, which was featured on NextShark, Mic, and AJ+, as well as the Protect Asian Lives gathering, which was featured on The Cut and Paper Magazine.
Siya has also spoken on organizing, Black-Asian solidarity, and abolition at UCLA Berkeley, DePaul University, Dominican University, University of Michigan, Collaboraction Theatre, Northwestern University, and co-facilitated a Black-Asian solidarity workshop at the 2021 Midwest Mixed Conference.
As an individual, they have also been featured on WNYC Morning Edition, Gothamist, USA Today, Hella Pinay, World Journal, Asian American Writers Workshop, Gay City News, NBC Chicago, and CNN. Siya has spoken on the podcasts Militantly Mixed, The What Gives Project, The Bánh Mì Chronicles, and Sippin’ Tea With Dr. G. Zhou-Lee’s essays on abolition and Black-Asian solidarity are available online at them., Mocha Magazine, and Truthout.
As a performing artist, previous credits include a soloist role in the Off-Broadway revival of Over Here! The Musical, West Side Story (New Bedford Festival Theatre,) and The Bluebird from Sleeping Beauty (Victoria Ballet Theatre,) and their own choreographed solo Homage, at the A-Squared Asian American Performing Arts Festival. They trained at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Ruth Page Center For the Arts under Dolores Long, Birute Barodcaite, Randall Newsome, Vanessa Lake, and Tracy Vonder Haar. Their short act play, The Soldier’s Home, was produced in 2015 by Circa Pintig, Chicago’s premiere Filipino theatre company. Recently, Siya made their New York trumpet debut with ChamberQUEER ensemble, performing Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy.
Siya also writes Afro-Asian fantasy and enjoys Chinese calligraphy. They hold a BA in Ethnomusicology from Northwestern University
Blasian March History
The first Blasian March took place on Oct 11, 2020. It was held both in Cadman Plaza, New York City and also in Los Angeles, California. In Los Angeles, attendees held space and dialogue about the need for Black Asian solidarity. In New York, all speakers were women, LGBTQ and/or disabled. Protestors used music and dancing to build solidarity with chants such as “Black Lives Matter,” “Asians 4 Black Lives,” and “Black Power, Asian Power.” This action marked the 6-year anniversary of the murder of trans Filipina woman Jennifer Laude by US marine Michael Pemberton. Protesters in New York City honored her by chanting “Justice for Jennifer.”
On June 5, 2021, the Blasian March held a Black Asian Pride Rally to celebrate Black, Asian and Blasian communities for Pride month. All speakers were Black, Asian and Blasian queer women, including a mixed Native American and Asian American activist student. An Egyptian trans asylee also danced to a song composed as homage to the Black trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, whose actions alongside Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and others ignited the Stonewall Riots. Filipino musicians and dancers also performed as protestors marched with chants including "Justice For Asians, Justice For Black People," “Free Palestine,” “Free Hong Kong,” “Free Brazil,” “Free Black Trans Women,” and "Black Asian Freedom."
The Instagram accounts lgbt, lgbtq, pride, and Black Women Radicals highlighted the Blasian March for its upcoming Black Asian Trans Power Rally, which occurred on October 16, 2021, in both New York City and New Haven to celebrate the one year anniversary and demand trans rights at the intersection of Black Asian solidarity. All speakers were trans community leaders. Protest chants included “Black Asian Trans Power,” “Justice For Black Trans, Justice For Asian Trans,” “Free Tibet,” “Free Nigeria,” and “Black Trans Liberation, Asian Trans Freedom.” Historic transfigures honored during the march included Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Mother Major, and Tamara Ching.
The Blasian March has been spotlighted previously on World Journal, Gay City News, HellaPinay, USA Today, and CNN. The organization has expanded in the digital platform to provide educational resources, amplify other solidarity actions, and more. Organizers have also fostered dialogue through social media with other activists in various cities, including Dallas, Philadelphia, and Paris. Throughout the year, the Blasian March hosts the virtual Blasian IsBeautiful healing circles for Black Asians, featuring therapists across the country. Currently, TheBlasian March is developing a new chapter in Los Angeles in collaboration with local leaders.
About Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics:
As part of the Queens Museum’s Year of Uncertainty, the Caribbean Equality Project is proud to present Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics, an interdisciplinary exhibition that celebrates queer and trans Caribbean resilience through a racial justice lens, while fostering critical conversations related to pride, migration, surviving colliding pandemics, and coming out narratives. Caribbean diasporic immigrant rights, gender justice, and trans rights advocates live at the intersections of outdated immigration policies, anti-black violence, racism, homophobia, transphobia, gender-based violence, xenophobia, and misogyny in the United States and throughout the Caribbean region.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, queer and trans immigrants of color have lived in a constant state of fear and isolation, from food insecurity, a lack of access to equitable healthcare, and rising rates of anti-Asian violence and police brutality against Black bodies. In a year of uncertainty, Live Pridefully reimagines and affirms undocumented Black and Brown LGBTQ+ immigrants and asylum seekers as essential workers, creatives, and contributors to the cultural diversity of New York City.
This interdisciplinary exhibition was originally presented at the Queens Museum from December 4, 2021, to March 6, 2022, as part of the Year of Uncertainty. In 2022, it was transformed into an outdoor photography exhibition shown at Brooklyn Bridge Park during the 2022 Photoville Festival. In 2023, this historic exhibition becomes the first public art installation by Photoville in Richmond Hill, Queens -home to predominantly Indo-Caribbean and South-Asian immigrant communities where Caribbean Equality Project is based.
Curated by Mohamed Q. Amin, portraits of Caribbean LGBTQ+ immigrants anchor the exhibition, with oral Afro and Indo-Caribbean migrant histories and stories driven to construct healing through storytelling, embodied resilience, and intersectional dialogue on postcolonial belonging, anti-Asian hate violence, and Black trans liberation.
Photography: Christian Thane
Visual Director: Richard Ramsundar, Creative Director, The World is Rich Productions
