10 Queer Artists You Should Know
Written by Kimberly Saenz | June 25 2026
This Pride Month, we are pleased to feature ten queer and/or gender nonconforming Asian American artists, across mediums, whose work you should check out!
Gregg Araki
Director/filmmaker Gregg Araki is recognized for his role in the New Queer Cinema movement of the 90s, with his surreal and nihilistic aesthetics that capture the essence of queer teenage love and chaos. Now 66, Araki was born in Los Angeles in 1959 to Japanese American parents. Although he began as an independent filmmaker, his Teen Apocalypse trilogy, “Totally F***ed Up” (1993), “The Doom Generation” (1995), and “Nowhere” (1997), is now considered a cult classic. His coming-of-age movies “Mysterious Skin” (2004) and “White Bird in a Blizzard” (2014), both adapted from books of the same name, explore childhood sexual abuse and dysfunctional family life. He has expressed that much of his work is personal to his experience as an openly queer person, including the Teen Apocalypse trilogy, which follows the lives of delinquent teenagers navigating sexuality, society, identity, and violence.
Jay Som
Melina Duterte, known by the stage name, Jay Som, is a musician and producer who has released several indie rock albums, such as her 2017 album, Everybody Works. Born in California in 1994 to Filipino immigrant parents, she came out as queer before hitting her teens. As she also began playing instruments and singing in her adolescence, much of her music, such as 2019 album Anak Yo, addresses the nuances of identity and culture. Music recorded in the confines of her bedroom and released to Bandcamp began receiving attention online, allowing her to collaborate and tour with bigger names in the industry. A master of producing bedroom lofi and indie pop, she is currently featuring on tours with Paramore and Death Cab for Cutie, as well as headlining her own shows. Tour dates and appearances can be found on the @jaysomband instagram page.
Frederick Tran
Frederick Tran (they/them/chanh) is a Vietnamese American activist currently working in communications and development with the NQAPIA, (National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance). Alongside Emily Townsend, they founded Four Palaces Publishing in 2021, where they continue to work as Executive Director and Publisher out of Dallas, Texas. The name “Four Palaces” is a tribute to the mother goddesses in Vietnam, a fitting name for a publishing house with a mission to help marginalized groups break into the publishing industry. Tran’s creation of Four Palaces allows for proper representation of multicultural, queer, and feminine voices. Tran attended the University of Texas at Arlington, where their activist work began, they continue to pursue roles with nonprofits that aid literature, arts, queer spaces and people. Tran presented the first Foreword Literary Festival in 2025, advocating for the written word of Vietnamese Americans. They foster a safe space for expression in every sense of the word, not only for Texas residents, but across borders and margins.
Hanari
Hannah Haas, known by stage name Hanari, is a 22-year-old singer-songwriter based in Houston and Austin, Texas. As a Korean American, her discography is made up of Kpop, Lofi, and Electropop singles in collaboration with various producers. She is known to experiment with genre while maintaining meaningful thematics via commentative lyrics which move gracefully between English and Korean. With a very vogue fashion, aesthetic, and sound, she is conscious of how her queerness intersects with her music, enabling her to create alternative spaces that liberate and encourage challenging the status quo. Leaning now into a distinctly hyper/electro pop image and sound, Hanari’s album will continue to act in resistance to the institutional heteronormativity which is placing many marginalized groups at risk. Follow @hanarimusic on socials to stay updated.
Chitra Ganesh
Chitra Ganesh is a multidisciplinary artist born in Brooklyn in 1975. Her oeuvre spans drawing, painting, animations, collages, digital imagery and video, and sculpture. Born to Indian immigrant parents, she studied literature, semiotic theory, art, and graphic design in India and New York. Much of her artwork challenges South Asian traditions and patriarchal norms via female and queer centered subjects or settings. In layered and colorful word-building, Ganesh intersects South Asian iconography, queer theory, multicultural animation styles from comics, films, and anime, mythology, and fairytales. She is an internationally recognized artist whose work has been exhibited for over a decade.
Nicole Pun
Ho Yan Pun Nicole is a Hong-Kong based artist and educator. Nicole currently teaches communication, cultural studies, and digital media at the University of Hong Kong. She is a Yale-China Arts Fellow whose art is exhibited and collected by the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. An open lesbian, Nicole’s 2014 In & Out Series pictures hands in the act of sexual touch. The various hands presented belong to American, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong lesbians interviewed by Nicole. The project, which is made up of photographs, explores lesbian intimacy while highlighting the history of sexual and bodily autonomy for LGBTQA+ communities in Hong Kong. Her medium is not limited to the photograph but extends into video and performance arts.
Holland
Holland, whose name honors the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, born Go Tae-seob, is a South Korean K-pop singer. Holland is credited with being the first openly gay Kpop idol but faced criticism and rejection from labels as a result. This led him to work two jobs to afford the production of his single, “Neverland” (2018), without the assistance of an agency. Unapologetically himself in his music and videos, which portrayed Holland and his partner, he persevered despite lack of industry support. His music generated enough fans and financial donations to help him create an album and eventually tour. Although no person should have to be subjected to discrimination or violence, Holland spearheaded a queer movement, not only for himself but to highlight the experiences of at-risk sexual minorities and denounce the normalization of prejudiced behavior.
Berenice Bing
Berenice Bing (1936-1998) was a Chinese American painter born in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Due to a traumatic childhood, she had limited exposure to her own culture and lived in foster homes; still, her abstract expressionism is associated with and influenced by Beats, Zen Buddhism, and calligraphy. Her circumstances prevented her from openly living as a lesbian, but she remained active in art groups such as Lesbian Visual Arts and wrote of her sexuality in journal entries. Unfortunately overlooked in her lifetime, she is now recognized for her expressionistic exploration of sexuality, assimilation, and duality.
Love Bullet by Inee
Love Bullet (2023-current) is an ongoing manga with only two published volumes, but the story is much anticipated after gaining traction online. Little personal information is known about Inee, the mysterious Japanese writer and illustrator working on the series from the United States. Although we cannot assume Inee’s personal identities, the manga itself is a wholesome, LGBTQA+ friendly read following a group of girls who have died before experiencing true love. Saved by the goddess of love herself, they work as cupids in the hopes that they will be given a second chance at life. They must now be responsible for match making amongst the living while navigating their own identities and desires.
Franny Choi
Choi (they/she) is a Korean American poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. Born in Minneapolis to South Korean parents, Choi’s writing often confronts the harsh reality of assimilation. An openly queer person, Choi’s most recent collection of essays, “We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg” (2026), challenges the representation of Asian women in American media. Through research on critical race theory, gender, sexuality, technology, and language, Choi comments on the stereotyping and oppression of Asian women. They have several accolades and awards, including during their time as an MFA student at the University of Michigan. Some of their notable collections are: “Soft Science” (2019) and “Death by Sex Machine” (2017).
