Favianna Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, and political activist based in Oakland, California. Her art and collaborative projects address migration, economic inequality, gender justice, and ecology. Favianna lectures globally on the power of art, cultural organizing and technology to inspire social change, and leads art interventions in communities around the country. 

When we don’t align ourselves with multiracialism that goes beyond the Asian diaspora, we are less likely to hold ourselves accountable for colorism, a phenomenon that occurred in Korean immigrant communities after a socioeconomic divide formed between them and Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and Filipinos. We remain silent about such issues, which affect certain mixed-race people, but privilege us. We are less critical in our study of historical antiblackness within Asian ethnic groups and less willing to mobilize in movements like Black Lives Matter. 

The idea of "control" is an illusion when attempting to create a "portrait" of another being. For me, there is the anticipation of a moment that will be unexpected, perhaps very dramatic, or a mood of something entirely else, for both subject and photographer. I like Carl Phillips' sensibility (he applies it to poetry), "…what I'm always after. Nothing gutless, and nothing without its ability to surprise."