The Guardian – Jinghua Qian

31 Aug 2022

Non-binary finery: can genderless fashion move beyond a label? | The Guardian

‘Genderless’ has become a buzzword in fashion, but what does it actually mean, besides brands being able to double their market for every item?

For The Guardian, I talked to trans and nonbinary designers and retailers about genderless branding, pinkwashing and what labels could do instead of whacking a rainbow on it.

‘I don’t think we should take the gender out of fashion’, says Rae Hill, designer at Origami Customs. ‘Instead of “genderless”, there needs to be more of a fluidity of gender. The gender of a piece of clothing is whatever gender you feel when you wear it, and not that you have to fit into the gender of that piece.’

29 Apr 202229 Apr 2022

Artist Yuki Kihara: ‘Galleries think they can tick the box with me’ | The Guardian

Tableau photograph of people posed on a river bank, dressed in colours of the rainbow. — Yuki Kihara, Fonofono o le nuanua: Patches of the rainbow (After Gauguin), 2020.

For The Guardian, I spoke to Venice Biennale artist Yuki Kihara about fa’afafine community, climate change, and resisting the image of the lone genius in her show Paradise Camp.

29 Nov 202130 Nov 2021

Baking Impossible | The Guardian

A fun review from me in The Guardian today about Baking Impossible, a delightful Netflix series that shows you can have your cake and drive it through an obstacle course too. It’s also a sweet celebration of diverse talent in STEM and the culinary arts.

15 Jul 2021

‘All clothes are handmade’: the migrant workers behind Australian fashion | The Guardian

For The Guardian, I wrote about the migrant workers behind the ‘made in Australia’ label and how their winning campaign for equal rights might be instructive for other gig economy workers today.

Stories of Vietnamese garment workers in Australia — An excerpt from Emma Do and Kim Lam’s graphic narrative, *Working From Home*, or *may ở nhà*.

I talked to Emma Do and Kim Lam, the writer and illustrator of Working From Home, a graphic narrative about Vietnamese outworkers in the garment industry, and Nguyet Nguyen and Beth McPherson, veteran manufacturing workers and organisers in the textile, clothing and footwear union.

27 Nov 202027 Nov 2020

Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt) film review | The Guardian

For The Guardian, I reviewed Monica Zanetti’s teen romcom, Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt), a pretty charming story of queer love – romantic, familial, and intergenerational.

‘Zanetti cleverly plays with the idea that our queer predecessors paved the way for how we live now, but as individuals can be just as bumbling and out of touch as anyone else when it comes to dealing with teenagers. We might idolise OWLs (“older wiser lesbians”) but they’re only flightless, bug-eyed humans after all.’

*Sophie Hawkshaw and Zoe Terakes in* Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt)*. Photograph: Nixco*

31 Aug 20208 Sep 2020

Mutual obligation is ritual humiliation

I wrote a quick opinion piece for The Guardian about going on the dole and navigating the confusing, punitive mutual obligations system. Shout out to the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, who have been a huge support in this time and one of few groups consistently advocating to raise the rate and suspend mutual obligations.

20 Aug 2020

The Baby-Sitters Club: the perfect PG escape for millennials and their kids – or anyone, really

Ann M Martin’s series was a staple of my childhood and luckily the Netflix reboot is excellent. I wrote about it for The Guardian.

2 Jul 20205 Aug 2020

Dear Australia: dispatches from a world overdue for a reckoning

‘For First Nations women, the apocalypse was already here. It’s part of the inheritance.’

For The Guardian, I wrote a preview article on Dear Australia, Playwriting Australia’s monologue marathon which runs 2-5 July 2020, and how it speaks to a hunger for rupture.