hamsa fae is a Vietnamese-French artist whose work moves between the digital and elemental + the ancestral and future-facing worlds. Shaped by a decade of shamanic and land-based inquiry, their practice traverses performance, sound and movement to activate the third-gender body as portal, oracle and technology of indigenous futurity. — hamsa’s work carries the notion of re-matriation; gently undoing coloniality through sensorial offerings that weave intimacy, ecology and identity. Whether in cyber or site-specific ritual, hamsa guides audiences toward embodied remembrance as reorientation. They treat the body as an atmosphere and a threshold, one that leaves traces on both forest floor and digital ether. — Here, hamsa opens a window into their current, where the in-between becomes a home.
AURORA — There are seasons when something in us begins to move before we understand where it’s going. A pull, a shedding, a quiet storm beneath the surface. What current is moving through your life right now — and how are you letting (or resisting) it reshape you?
hamsa — A current of clarity. Seeing through more and more systemic illusions. It’s like getting swallowed by a wave. Tumbling, twirling, flailing for air. So much laughter arrives when reaching the surface. What is feared of, is recycled. Ocean gives the best fucks, really. Aphrodite teaches buoyancy, to unclench from fantasy. Slapping flies away, distractions lead to more hedonistic desire. I need my sexual energy to create. To let go of the outcome, and devote to something or one thing. Anything that widens my scope of empathy. The body is an antennae, discerning what to adopt and what to transmit. I resist falling into victimhood entrapments through the propagandic mundane. Offering care and left eye gazes, gives me hope.
Clarity integrates with a steadfast wearing of daily intention. We live in a shiny world, pixelated for subjective consumption. I yearn for more creativity to shape me instead. A reminder to be more sovereign in what I contribute to. More bold. But also lots of sun bathing. Making out. Feeding friends. I have to remember life moves through me, not at me.
AURORA — Some truths arrive slowly — they bud, wait, then, all at once, they demand to be spoken— even if they’re not yet tame. What feels ripe in your inner world right now — and how are you tending or avoiding it?
hamsa — Enjoyment, emphasis on the joy part. A hummingbird is flying six inches away from my head as I write this. A joyline is consciously reminding myself that it exists underneath the existentialism of the day. Imagine a hopscotch drawn onto the sidewalk with chalk. If the chalk fades, we have to re-outline it again. Or draw another one somewhere else. Or add a prompt to dance at the end. Joy is chosen. It would be an interesting social experiment to see who stops to play the game. Who is aware of the ground, of surroundings. Or look at Balinese women carrying fifty pounds of dirt on their head every day, back and forth in hot climate. With a smile no less. This feeling of connection to the moment or each moment inspires me. Sometimes it does take being high on matcha all day for me to focus, but damn I make a good latte.
That is why presence ripens happiness into joy. What can be fleeting turns into everlasting because it’s a choice. What evolves from joy then? Muditā, a sympathetic avatar form of joy that celebrates others for their success, well-being, and accomplishment. How sexy is that, right. I make sure to surround my outer world with people who practice this.
AURORA — We are always in relationship with what turns us on. Not just sexually — but soulfully, creatively, energetically. Sometimes it’s quiet, other times it’s dangerous. What’s quietly turning you on right now —and how are you letting that energy move (or hide) in your life?
hamsa — Ferality. Undisturbed, off grid. Nude, of course. A place I can express my fecundity without a need for vigilant protection. All senses heightened five times the usual, to feel pleasure in the unusual. Wind grazing nipples. Heat banished by river minerals. Dryness silkened by a shared meal with kin. There is so much noise around the body, how to censor it yet bookmark it for later. Domesticate it, to make it a pawn for supremacy culture. Surveil it until it hardens the viewer, privately among four walls. It doesn’t matter how the body is expressed in the West, porn-programmed eyes follow. The hollow stare sponsored by the lizard brain, and a dead smile.
I am always curious about people's motivations, so I watch mating rituals at nude beaches. As de-armoring occurs, the ocean seduces for yearning. Oh, there is the person circling. One staring, but hiding behind me. There is another peacocking in downward dog, front and center. We are animals, yet evolved to fit structures of human labor. I think that’s why awareness is so vital in our progression as a human species. Westernized civilization is built by dopamine releases, attachment to a feeling. Place fear anywhere next to sex and it sells to distract from the inner need for remembering one’s bodily autonomy. I question the capacity to move from the primal and to think more critically than generations before us. If conquering something, someone, or somewhere is built into our programming then I wonder how our behaviors mold the land we live on.
Follow hamsa’s work here