J P 제피 (s(he), (he)r, we) is a bicultural and bigender artist, color explorer, tree climber, and truthseeker who has created home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. S(he) is a survivor, queer, and the child of an immigrant survivor of the Korean war. J P challenges dominant narratives and creates inceptive spaces in a practice of spiritual activism and exploration of the porous relationship between truth, beauty, and identity. This examination is the outgrowth of continual struggle for safety in body and soul in an interdisciplinary practice that synthesizes tensions and collapses genres, spaces, identities, and norms. (He)r work exists in an ontological space and presents stories of ritual integration and spiritual journeys. J P was named one of the 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in 2022.

J P 제피 is in relationship with members of the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) community in Albuquerque to develop personal and collective storytelling. Responding to prevailing cultural exclusion and the systematic reduction of Asian Americans to ornament or threat, J P’s project called My Story is Golden will map cultural knowledge and collective imagination as community members share and witness one another.

J P is simultaneously grappling with (he)r own visibility and authentic self: s(he) cannot ask others to share their story without sharing (he)r own. S(he) is being guided by somatic knowledge in (he)r body to tell stories that manifest through physical rigor and rooting with land. S(he) wants to connect (he)r body to the larger community body through rituals of storytelling as social sculpture. J P is perceiving that the urge to encode ritual and story into land respects the land, connects human to place, and a diaspora can become un-alien in the process.