Van Mei

INFO

Name	Van Mei (they/them)
Also known as	f.k.a. Vanessa Mei Crofskey, Vanessa Crofskey
Born	1996
Country of Birth	Aotearoa
Place of Residence	Whakatāne
Ethnicities	Hokkien Chinese, Pākehā
Artform	Visual arts, Literature
Decades Active	2010s, 2020s

ABOUT

Van Mei is an artist, writer, performer and producer and was the director of arts and culture platform, The Pantograph Punch, from 2022 to 2024. Their poetry is characterised by “political edge and personal vulnerability”, and alongside their visual art practice, they often use bureaucratic formats to highlight and question underlying power structures. As AUP New Poets 6 editor Anna Jackson writes:

Amanda Robinson’s description of the effect of a [Van Mei] performance is true to my experience too: ‘Between poems she’s sarcastic and self-deprecating, but when she begins a poem she silences the room, save for a synchronised sharp exhale when she drops a line like “Weren’t you an open casket for the reckless?” She is in total control of her intonation; even her breaths feel calculated.’

Mei is of Hokkien Chinese and Pākehā descent and grew up in Pōneke with their Malaysian-Chinese mother. “I was probably six or seven when I realised that I was good at art and writing, and that these were two activities that I liked doing,” they said in an interview with Storyo. “When I graduated from high school and was figuring out what to do next, I thought: What am I good at? What do I like to do best? and decided to apply for art school.”

They studied at AUT, graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in sculpture in 2017. Much of their work interrogates power structures through an often tongue-in-cheek reappropriation. Large spreadsheet poems — later published in AUP New Poets 6 — explored what happens to language when it is forced into capitalist frameworks like spreadsheets and invoices. “How language is both a tool of enforcing categorisation and power but also can be the means to slip in and resist it, and how art might help us to notice the invisible signs of the world around us.” Similarly, their work on Wellbeing Analysis Techniques Limited™ — a collaboration with artist Kimmi Rindel — mimics the visual language of corporate wellness, self-improvement and optimisation’, “not necessarily to subvert it but to point out its place and operation in society.”

In 2020, Mei was part of the Artspace Aotearoa New Artists Show 2020. Their work, Collateral Damage, drew on propaganda and posters that had been circulating to “replicate the ways that popular media has aligned images of East Asian women with Covid-19…exemplify[ing] the design and use of propaganda media to exploit vulnerable circumstances for private gain”. Rather than attempting to counter these representations, Mei sought to illuminate them and invite the public to recognise the often invisible power and influence such representations have. "Creating my own forms of propaganda or at least replicating the ones I saw was a way for me to try and understand how these images were created and replicated... that images aren't neutral and they have agendas". Mei considers arts and activism not as separate practices, but as conjoined forces that feed and strengthen each other.

Being queer/non-binary and living with C-PTSD and health issues related to adverse childhood experiences, they utilise their art practice to make ‘invisible’ struggles and barriers more visible, advocating for the rights, presence and protection of women, gender minorities and migrants. Mei is a survivor of intergenerational domestic abuse and childhood sexual violence, and, for them, writing has been a helpful avenue for processing and reflection.

Since graduating, they have complemented their creative practice alongside administrative arts work, including being the producer-in-residence at Basement Theatre, a curator for Window Gallery and director of Enjoy Contemporary Art Space.