Nyingv.Jae
aka Jae Saechao
pronouns they/them/ninh
I am an interdisciplinary artist, community educator and culture worker. I was born and raised on occupied Ohlone lands (East Bay Area) as the first child of Iu Mien + Khmu refugees from the U.S. Secret War, and currently based on Nisenan territory (Sacramento, CA) while I call Laos my motherland. My art/work centers around belonging, culture-keeping + culture-shaping, ancestral healing, and community liberation with emphasis on fat, queer, indigenous Southeast Asian femme and gender-expansive issues. Through visual art, creative writing, teaching and advocacy, my practice and full breadth of offerings reflect my belief in the power of creativity x culture as direct catalysts for community healing, autonomy and overall social change. I am guided by my dreams for a future that sees our collective communities safe, abundant and free.
I was named as an Emerging Artist Fellow (2021) by the California Arts Council and a recipient of the Hidden Gems Award III (2022) from the Lao Iu Mien Culture Association.
Featured in…
Note: Some past work and interviews featured throughout my website are no longer reflective of my current chosen name or non-binary gender.
Platform Magazine - Humxn Voices
“…this has never been done before and that’s a huge part of what I mean when I refer to breaking and making tradition. I’m breaking the generational curses of my family and my people by saying things that need to be said that have never been said; by resisting patriarchy and approaching my culture and traditions through a feminist, queer, fat and abundant lens. I’m reapproaching what I’ve been taught, understanding it for its origins and recognizing that not everything needs to be kept.
This [wisdom] doesn’t start with me either. As an Indigenous Iu Mien and Khmu person, and as people who have lost our land to centuries of both white supremacy and other Asian empires, we have known oppression and displacement for so long. We have always had to learn how to adapt. If we cling on to authenticity and the belief that there’s only one way to be, we’re just going to contribute to white supremacy’s erasure of us. There has never been one way of being Iu Mien or Khmu, there’s been so many ways—all the time.”
Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement
Dreams Detained, in her Words: The effects of detention and deportation on Southeast Asian American women and families
A joint report with Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC) and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) that tells the stories of Southeast Asian American women whose family members have experienced detention and deportation.
#iumienwomenmoversandshakers Feature with Sacramento Iu Mien Association (SACIMA)
“…I believe in transformative traditions. I have to because as people of the diaspora, we were forced to readapt and reimagine. At one point, we had no word for giraffe in our vocabulary. That changed when we arrived in the U.S.— ‘maaz jaang ndaauv’. If we can invent words for things that we never previously knew existed, I believe we have the ability to transform our thinking around gender, sexuality, and even mental health and disability. Especially when it means making space for the existences of countless people throughout our ancestry to finally be seen for who they are.”
We, Ceremony - Spotlight
“ …I think I do this through existing authentically and honestly as I am able. And by returning to what I've always inherently known as a result of my indigeneity. I carry my ancestors with me and in doing so, I live in their light and through their stories of survival. Even still, it took me a very long time to realize that the only true honor I could ever offer my people is through first honoring myself. And sometimes that has looked like living in resistance to the very same traditions that have informed our ways of life for centuries, like our heavily-fortified systems of patriarchy and gender-based violence…”