When I first met Andrew Yang, I thought this interview was going to be about life in New York as a 24 year-old quintessential slash kid - with the model slash dancer slash photographer discussions at the top of my list, along with a healthy focus on the slash gay ex-mormon. Controversy! As we started talking before the interview, I quickly realized that none of it was half as interesting as his burgeoning career as a dollmaker - the ridiculously talented designer and craftsmen of the truly couture fashion rag dolls he calls Kouklitas. It was refreshing to look at a body of work that was exploring something other than the popular territory of gay identity, gay politics, or hot naked gay boys, (which is saying a lot because you know how we love hot naked gay boys), and wasn’t afraid to make beauty its agenda. A truly original artist and a total rockstar dollmaker. Yeah, I actually just said that. Rockstar dollmaker.

Portraits of Andrew photographed for EVB by Allison Michael Orenstein
Doll convention photography for EVB by David Kimelman
Kouklitas photography by Jessica Yatrofsky

Weston Bingham: So how did you spend your summer vacation?

Andrew Yang: I went back to Salt Lake City for three weeks. It was my longest summer vacation since moving to New York five years ago, and then I went to LA for a week.

WB: You’re from Salt Lake City, the home of the Mormon Church? Do you come form a Mormon family?

AY: Yeah, one of seven kids, all of our names start with “A”. As Mormon as you can get, basically. My parents are both converts. My mom is from California, and my father is from Taiwan.

WB: And your father is also Mormon? Taiwanese Mormon?

AY: Taiwanese Mormon.

WB: Interesting. Collectively, the Mormon Church donated something like 19 million dollars to prevent Prop 8 from being overturned. Not what you would call a tolerant group. How did growing up being a part of that work out for you?

AY: It didn’t really. It was a very weird upbringing because it was very masculine-oriented and male-driven. I was always forced to go to Boy Scouts and go to all these church meetings. It was terrible.

WB: Boy Scouts - another really tolerant group. Were you out at that time?

AY: Well, I had always assumed I would go on a mission, have a bunch of kids, and get married as soon as I turned 21, but as soon as I hit puberty it all went down the shitter.

WB: Do you still consider yourself a Mormon

AY: No, If I did I’d be a very bad one.

WB: So I would have thought your parents would have freaked out, had you excommunicated, sent you to an ex-gay compound for re-education.

AY: Well they did kind of do that with my older brother, who is also gay, so he kind of ruined it for me. When I came out it was kind of anticlimactic, but when he came out there was screaming and wailing, and then he was on the pride parade float for years, super gay, super rebellious, my parents detested him. It really made me want to move to New York. It’s all kind of weird because he just got married to a woman, so…

WB: How glamorous is the Salt Lake City gay lifestyle?

AY: [laughs] You know, there’s actually a surprisingly strong counterculture there because of the conservative environment. There’s an alternative music scene, an alternative art scene, and an alternative gay scene. And there’s a lot of cute boys. A lot of corn-fed Mormons. Big boys, big teeth, big everything really. They’re all really cute. They’re not quite hick, but not quite LA.

WB: [laughs] “not quite hick and not quite LA”? I’m not even sure what that means…

AY: [laughs] Well… I think it’s… it’s kind of… I think I’m digging myself into a hole.

Here is where got off track with fifteen minutes of dishing and discussions about the older gay couple he stayed with in Salt Lake City who always had “the right drugs” for any occasion and a domestic lifestyle that he mildly aspires to, whether or not James Dean and Marilyn Monroe were actually as hot as the mythology makes them out to be, and all the stories for all of his tattoos. For the record, his chest tattoo is an art nouveau design framing the face of his great grandmother Mary Astor, the roses are from his childhood coloring book, a copy of which he found for sale on the street as soon as he moved to New York (an amazing story I think), and the typography around his neck is from an Oscar Wilde short story “The Fisherman and His Soul” that says, “With a wheel I can draw the moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee death”.

WB: OK, so on your blog, you describe yourself as “actor / dancer / singer / writer / illustrator / dollmaker / model / photographer” and then on another of your sites you offer “illustration and graphics”. Is that aspirational or do you actually do all those things.

AY: [laughs] I absolutely do all those things.

WB: I think it’s interesting that so many people your age make claim to a wide range of territory, really doing all those things, while never actually having to pick just one to define themselves. And that goes not just for career choices, but sexuality too. It’s all become very fluid.

AY: I think people my age were taught a lot about self-esteem. “Be all that you can be.” “Everything is possible.” Everything in my childhood felt like a cakewalk, despite the fact I was in bumfuck Utah. And you know, it feels nice to fuck, it feels nice to be fucked, so why box yourself in? Especially in a place like New York where everything IS possible. You CAN be whatever you want to be. You CAN be an actor slash dancer slash whatever… slash clerical assistant by day. I really do want to fulfill all those slashes at different points in my life, but there’s always one that’s in bold because that’s what’s relevant to me at that time.

WB: OK, well the one that’s bold right now is dollmaking. So lets talk about that. How did you get into it?

AY: Well, I’ve always been a big collector of dolls. I was that little gay boy that played with dolls, and my mother was a big doll collector as well. I collected the Silkstone collection by Barbie. They were made from hard vinyl that mimicked porcelain, and used the molds from the original Barbies…

At this point, and in this order, Andrew got into great detail about Barbie and then we somehow started talking about Catholics, Boston, wonky teeth, Jason Wu and his designs for Barbie, the non-white Barbies, the black GI Joe, the ginger GI Joe, and his like of gingers.

…ANYWAY. I collected the dolls, and made clothes for them, and re-dressed them. What’s the point of buying one and keeping it in a box on a shelf? It takes away the function of the object. A doll should be played with.

WB: It’s interesting that your very couture dolls, adopt the cheapest of dollmaking traditions - the rag doll. Everything is so custom, so bespoke, and these dolls aren’t cheap, but you’re using what is considered the lowest-end of doll foundations.

AY: I do want to start carving heads and hands in wood, but the fabric doll - there’s something very warm and friendly about it. Like Raggedy Ann and Andy. There’s nothing scary about a fabric doll. It’s just not intimidating.

WB: Having held the dolls, there’s definitely something inviting about them. The clothes are very thick and rich - you WANT to hold them. It’s not like a plastic Barbie wearing a thin layer of cotton.

AY: Yeah, I use silk, cotton, wool, fur - I love lush, rich, rich fabrics. That’s one of the things that drew me to fashion in the first place, these gorgeous, gorgeous, fabrics. The best things about the dolls are the huge opulent dresses. They’re almost like mini-pillows that you can cuddle.

WB: I also think it’s interesting that as an artist you’ve chosen to create something that I would classify as romantic. It’s not political, you’re not making social statements, you’re not talking about your specific ethnic or cultural identity, you’re not reacting to your repressive religious upbringing, your not going on about your sexual identity. You’ve put all of that aside in favor of romanticism and fantasy. You’ve chosen to make things who’s value is in their beauty.

AY: Yeah, well politics, or sexual identity - sometimes these can be very ugly places, depending on your perspective, and that’s not what I love. I love creating beautiful things.

WB: I think a lot of artists believe beauty, or an attention to aesthetics cloud the message, but I think in your case, beauty IS the message.

AY: It’s really just purely romantic. There isn’t a lot of that right now I think because there’s a necessity to have a social motivation behind what you do. It’s almost become a requisite. I think that the fact that I can be here in New York and making dolls, of all things, IS a political statement in and of itself. Maybe it says something about the state of queer culture for my generation. I used to be so embarrassed to tell people that I played with dolls. That was the most emasculating thing that could happen. I’m sure I’m not the only fucking gay that’s ever played with a bloody Barbie doll, but, I loved it enough that I would talk about it. I’m not apologetic about it.

WB: I don’t think you have anything to be apologetic for, except for maybe the fact that you don’t make boy dolls.

AY: I don’t have any boy dolls. To be perfectly honest, I did make a boy doll, and my friend wanted to buy him, but she thought it was a girl. She really identified with him so I went along with it and gave it some fake eyelashes. I joke about it being my male-to-female tranny doll.

WB: Was it anatomically correct?

AY: No, and that’s really the reason I haven’t done any more boy dolls. I want to figure out how to give it a penis, but built in. I don’t want to attach one later - it has to be built in.

WB: But do you give the girl dolls vaginas?

AY: [laughs] I don’t, but vaginas are elusive creatures!

WB: What’s your favorite evil doll movie?

AY: [without missing a beat] Barbarella!

WB: That’s not a doll movie.

AY: There’s a scene: Barbarella crash-lands on a planet and gets abducted by these two little twins on ice skates in really bad wigs, and they take her and tie her up, and then these creepy dolls with snapping mouths attack her. Of course it’s all very lo-tech 60s special effects. They look like these gorgeous little old antique porcelain dolls and they have these little steel teeth, but also this really psychedelic blue hair and blue skin and red lips.

WB: On your blog you’ve started posting work by filmmakers that in some way animate dolls, like the Quay Brothers for example. Are you planning on bringing your dolls to life in that way?

AY: Eventually I do want to figure out a way to puppet them, with sticks and detachable hooks. Snajana, the first doll I made, is the only doll I’ve developed a real persona for (she’s the only one I said I would never sell, because she was my first). [In a Russian accent] She was a young Russian girl who was sold into prostitution, and she’s very vulgar, and sexy, and I want to start interviewing people with her. She would do the interview.

WB: Do all your ladies have back stories?

AY: Yes, they all do! By the time I’m finished working on the doll I have an entire narrative that gets passed on to the people who buy them.

WB: When they leave home do you cry a little? Do you get empty-nest syndrome?

AY: Yeah! I dropped off one of my dolls one day and I went out with my friends that night and they all asked me what was wrong and that I seemed very melancholy. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was because I just gave up a doll!

New York is so about hustling, and networking, and sell, sell, sell, and the dolls are the only project that I have that is different from that. I just want to make them. I just want to create the art and everything else will just happen. I don’t have to hustle, I don’t have sell them. I always tell my roommate that If I don’t sell another fucking doll, at least I’ll have the most beautiful doll collection in the world!

WB: So, you just went to a doll collectors convention. I look at your dolls and I think of them as art, not dolls in the typical sense. Why would you choose to announce yourself at a convention rather than a gallery? And did anybody at the convention get it?

AY: There were a few that got it. The people who bought them got it. To me, as a doll collector, I know what doll collectors buy, but also as an artist I know what they’re worth. I want to bridge the two. I want the die-hard doll collectors who only collect Bru, or Jumeau, or French porcelain dolls form the 1830s, but I also want people who collect more contemporary art to say “I want that on my couch”.

WB: So your dolls are meant to be interacted with?

AY: They are. I don’t want them on the shelf. She’s OK on the shelf but I want you to take her, maybe hand her around, maybe take her little hand and wave hello, and do a little dance. I really, really want them to be simultaneously a gorgeous piece of art - an heirloom that you can hand down, as well as something that you can hold by the hand and walk down the street with.
I feel like art has become untouchable, from my perspective. It’s something that you stand back and look at and I don’t like that. That’s not what art was to me growing up. Art was something that was close, and relevant. Something I could touch, and I could feel and I could hold, and that’s what my dolls are. Even in fashion you see these couture gowns and god forbid you should touch it or wrinkle it! What’s the point of having a gorgeous dress if you can touch it or feel it or wear it?

The beauty of this 27 inch cotton creature is that you can touch it, you can feel it and you can play with it. You can experience it on another level than if it’s sitting on your shelf or hanging on your wall. There’s an intimacy, and I feel as a collector, you would have your own narrative, your own little special innuendos that nobody else would see or grasp. That’s what’s special about it. If you have a painting in your house - a painting is a painting and you see it and assume as much about it as anyone who comes in and out of your door. But if it’s a doll, there’s a relationship there! [laughs].

WB: Is there such a thing as an underground doll culture we should be aware of?

AY: No, as far as I know there really isn’t, which is kind of sad. I want to create it! I’d like to redefine what it means to own and play with a doll. I think it’s often dismissed as being frivolous and girlish and childish and silly, but, people have been making dolls since the beginning of time. It’s a very basic and human thing. I want to have them in places where people have not just the doll, but they’ll be designing a room in their house and they need something, they need a life, they need a little personality, a little something there.

WB: Instead of a plant?

AY: INSTEAD OF A PLANT! OH MY GOD, would you rather have a fern or a set of redheaded conjoined twins in an 18th century bustle dress?

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