One Last Letter from Anne 💌

Dear friends:

Serving Asian Arts Initiative as its executive director these past six years has been the most transformative experience of my life. Some of this is because the past six years have been transformative to everyone on the globe. We have negotiated a medical pandemic, social endemics, public mandates and are living through disastrous climate triage. To stay alive would be change enough.

Other transformations were purely personal—I became a parent for the first time, a Philadelphian for the first time, and a woman who falls outside of the purview of advertisers’ demographics for the last time.

The most important change engendered by this work, has been spiritual, which is to say relational; depending wholly on the holiness of intangible feelings between each of us as humans. My intimacies with staff members, board members, funders, fans and critics, have left indelible imprints on my craftwork as a participant in the cultural economy of our region.

Deeper still, might be the psychic fingerprints forged into my hand, with artists and cultural laborers. These relationships feel like natural dyes bleeding into each other on a canvas or t-shirt. The dyes are inexorable as much as they are permanent; set into an unrelenting relief of color that may represent the possibility of change without changing its own nature. Working with artists at the threshold of transformation is, I’ve realized, my life’s absolute mission. It took this work at AAI to come to that realization. I look so forward to continuing that work wherever I am, from here on out.

I share this bit of self-discovery to convey my complete gratitude to the people who helped me actualize it. I literally would not be who I am today without the years of psychic devotion we have intermittently committed to each other—you all, and I all. The effusive messages I’ve received since the initial announcement of my departure from AAI all prove to me that our connections were very real. And in them, I feel an interconnectivity with my people, and so I thank you once again for reflecting upon yourselves how much we mean to each other.

With that, I hope to be permitted a bit of didacticism. As the status of my relationship with AAI changes (I’m never leaving!), I want to impart three pieces of advice on my way out as ED:

1. Be kind.

More than any other trait, I have found grace to be the most important in our line of work. Caregiving begins with kindness. This is obvious to those serving young people as AAI has for 31 years. Well, I think adult conflict should begin with kindness, too. Conflict is also something we’ve overseen for in the past three decades, and I hope what we did for the art of disagreement and social impact can be viewed as a practice of mercy.Now when I say “be kind in conflict” that does not mean I think you have to bend your principles or be a people pleaser. In fact the kindness I speak of here has to begin with oneself. Be kind to yourself more than anyone. Understand that change takes time, even if the burning thoughts in your head insist on urgency. Saying what you mean, advocating for yourself, all take grace that comes with a minute, often packaged inside of a deep breath. Kindness sometimes just means taking your foot off the gas pedal. Notice also that I am not saying we need to be gentle. I love nothing more than a violent eruption of mercy. Surprise gifts, an allowance for change without the obligation for long rationalizations, and my favorite: a decision in the morning to take a personal day. Stunning, not gentle. But healthy. Kind.

2. Be cool.

Don’t be so kind to yourself you forget what you’re here to do.Not to add to the dogpile of criticism against Raygun (the Olympic B-Girl from Australia), and if you don’t already know what I’m talking about: a white woman with a PhD in cultural movement competed at the Olympics, performing what to her was an appreciation of urban dance, but embarrassed herself and lambasted the art by doing it her way. Don’t be like that. Be cool. Screw the dissertation. And I can’t believe this is the age we’re in that I’m about to say the following words, but in the allegory of Olympic coolsmanship, you want to be the Turkish shooter in a T-shirt, not the Australian breakdancer looking like a ball girl on a tennis court.

3. Be brave.

Don’t be so cool you get comfortable in the automated waves of social media and personality cults just because everyone else is doing it. Funders, do not lose momentum or faith in the incredibly brave commitments you’ve made to constituents who often fight twice as long and hard for the benefits inherent to the status quo. Leaders, let’s keep giving our fighters the air they need to take our entire ecosystem to flight. And to my beloved artists, please, I beg you: work up the courage to answer our emails in a timely fashion.

Gratefully,

Anne Ishii