Digital Diasporas, founded by yáo collaborative in 2021, is a distributed, remote residency that gives artists the space to research, cultivate their practice, and convene across borders. Digital Diasporas is a spacious opportunity for artists to do deep thinking and form cross-border connections without the pressure of producing a final product. The final selections for the 2023 Digital Diasporas residency are Kim Ye, Winnie Cheung, and Beau Lai.

During their Digital Diasporas residency with Asian Arts Initiative, Kim Ye researched the history of Chinese immigrant labor as it relates to sex work, Chinatown communities, and the representation of Chinese women in the years leading up to the Page Act (1875). The Page Act was passed to prevent East Asian – mainly Chinese – women from entering and giving birth in the United States. The rationale for this policy was that Chinese women immigrating to the United States were all prostitutes and/or otherwise morally corrupt. This was the precursor of the better-known Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which banned all Chinese laborers from entering the United States. This body of research contributes to her upcoming three-act experimental film exploring entanglements between East Asian femininity, erotic labor, domesticity, and apocalyptic fantasy in the United States.