Beatrice Glow Interview
Tell us about yourself. Does your upbringing inform your work and worldview?
Growing up in California along the Pacific Rim, I developed an awe for the vastness of the ocean, especially knowing that my parents’ homeland lies on the other side in Taiwan. While I was raised in a predominantly immigrant East Asian community in Silicon Valley, my most memorable childhood moments were spent in a seaside fishing village in Southeast Taiwan, where my grandmother lived. This place, a blend of Indigenous Amis and settler Hakka cultures, sparked my deep interest in Austronesia—the region linking Taiwan to Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. Five millennia ago, humans set sail from Southeast Taiwan and, through long-distance voyaging on outrigger canoes, settled across Island Southeast Asia and Oceania—a geographic region extending west to Madagascar, north to Hawaii, south to Aotearoa (New Zealand), and east to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
My ancestors include both Indigenous peoples and settlers, a mixed heritage shaped by histories of dispossession, labor, and migration. One of my lineages traces back twenty-four generations to Sandimen, a village in the mountains of Southwestern Taiwan, where the dominant Indigenous culture is Paiwan. In the Paiwan language, pulima refers to artists—those gifted with talent from above, with the responsibility to share it. While I am not a culture bearer, understanding these origins motivates me to work in solidarity with those striving to preserve their ancestral wisdom and lifeways, and to bridge differences in a world filled with divisive rhetoric. My awareness of shared origins with so many cultures spread across vast distances—shaped by my experience growing up in an immigrant family—has fostered my commitment to elevating counternarratives that honor the richness of kinship. It taught me that we live in a global archipelago, interwoven through oceanic, diasporic, and trade circulations—because all islands connect underwater.
Can you describe the role of research in your practice? Do you decide on a topic first, or is your research inspired by exhibition opportunities or geographical areas of interest?
A significant part of my research-creation practice involves grappling with the present by examining history’s contemporary relevance and impact. I spend a lot of time researching historical collections and sites, conducting oral history interviews, and collaborating with and amplifying the work of historians, cultural heritage professionals, and culture bearers. My previous research topics have included East Asian migration to South America, Austronesian wayfinding, the intertwined activities of the Dutch East and West India Companies, the 17th-century Spice Wars, and Native New York.
Studying the interrelated histories of globalization has been a deeply personal exploration of one’s place in the world. What narratives shaped my worldview? How can I counter historical amnesia? Knowledge-making is a lifelong pursuit and a framework for creating history-informed shared existences.
My work is scaffolded around questions of belonging, sovereignty, community care, and the importance of survivance and storytelling. Perhaps my earliest research was driven by a need to understand violence and injustices. At around 11 years old, I found photo documentation of the Rape of Nanking—images that still haunt me. Around the same time, I asked my father where I could learn more about Indigenous Taiwanese history, and he told me that archives in the Netherlands held the answers. As a teenager, I volunteered to transcribe Holocaust survivor interviews, an experience that taught me the significance of oral history.
As a younger artist, my focus was on understanding my cultural position and agency within global power structures. For example, curious about family branches in Argentina, I spent two years in Peru retracing Asian labor and migration pathways to South America. I then explored the Great Ocean as a crucial connection between Asia and the Americas, looking at the aesthetics of luxury and power as forms of manicured violence. After years of building a historically grounded practice, I’m now applying what I’ve learned to focus on how we can envision and work toward more just futures. I see an opportunity to support educational efforts that bridge knowledge gaps.
What can we learn from studying the social history of plants?
The social history of plants offers a lens through which we can understand present-day power structures, particularly through the circulation of humans, plants, and commodities during the early stages of globalization. In projects such as Aromérica Parfumeur, Rhunhattan: A Tale of Two Islands, Spice Routes/Roots, and Once the Smoke Clears, I focus on the 17th-century Spice Wars and their aftermath to reveal solidarities between Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, while also uncovering the molecular and transnational connections between these regions.
For example, in 1621, the Dutch East India Company’s decimation of over 90% of the Bandanese people in present-day Indonesia, in pursuit of a nutmeg trade monopoly, underscores the brutality of colonial powers. This act not only decimated a population but also reinforced trade networks that continue to shape our present-day economic systems.
This intellectual pursuit has also been a way to better understand humanity’s relationship with nature. Professor Daniela Bleichmar’s book Visible Empire explores, through the lens of art history, how colonial regimes aestheticized and categorized the world to control and subjugate it. Examples include natural history illustrations, taxidermies of plants and animals, and caste paintings of non-European people, which reduced them to mere resources for European capitals. Understanding these trade histories from the early modern period has been a journey to grasp the profound loss and intergenerational trauma caused by colonial violence, an experience shared by many across the globe.
What drew you to working with scents and developing olfactory projects?
In 2013, I transitioned away from a career in the fashion industry and began questioning the language of luxury and what enables it. Growing up with an inventor and engineer father who encouraged experimentation, combined with my research on the social history of plants, led me to ask: What is the scent of colonialism?
It smells of luxurious perfumes in gilded flacons, supported by unsavory supply chains, the romanticization of racial others, and distant lands. It is the sweet rotting smell of Rafflesia, the Southeast Asian corpse flower named after British colonial officer Stamford Raffles. It’s also the slow violence of pervasive factory emissions polluting low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods. Scent is a powerful metaphor for colonial miasma, or a lingering atmospheric presence like a bad perfume. It serves as a storytelling tool for invisible yet omnipresent forces—microaggressions, gendered experiences, and prejudice—that are hard to quantify. Scent embodies a diasporic reality, one that is often difficult to articulate but that leaves us feeling out of place, alienated, or longing for non-existent homes.
I also wanted to challenge the hierarchy that privileges sight over smell. In our visual-literacy-dominant society, scent is often relegated to a lesser sense. However, scent has an immediate, visceral impact. Almost everyone has an opinion about it, yet lacks the adequate vocabulary to describe it, regardless of education level. This makes scent a more accessible and democratic medium. Additionally, since scent is often associated with femininity and is perceived as something that should please and seduce, I use this unassuming medium as an unexpected tool to unpack and challenge dominant narratives.
Is there a relationship between your use of technology, particularly 3D printing and artificial intelligence, and your examination of colonialism and imperialism?
These technologies were made possible largely through military research and funding, some invented in Silicon Valley, where I grew up. Using them in the community arts context repurposes these new technologies for positive, life-affirming purposes rather than destruction.
In recent years, I’ve been using virtual reality as a collective envisioning tool with my many collaborators. For example, in Mannahatta VR, my collaborator Alexandre Girardeau and I created a precolonial and eco-futures reality of Manhattan based on input from ecological data and oral history. We then shared the project with culture bearers for many deep listening sessions to ensure we accurately reflected their visions. Similarly, for my exhibition at the New-York Historical, I created a series of parade float maquettes with culture bearers whose heritages were impacted by Dutch colonialism. The process included using virtual reality sculpting to generate 3D models that I could quickly show to culture bearers on a video call to get feedback. Then I would integrate feedback to generate updated drafts of the 3D models. Consent was fully baked into the collaborative process and there were few surprises when I eventually 3D printed the objects. This process opened up a space for interdisciplinary collaboration, adapting this medium to serve communities and histories beyond its original design.
What interests you about language, and how does this influence your choice of artwork or project titles? Is humor a part of your work?
I grew up speaking Mandarin and Taiwanese at home, learned English at school, and later picked up some Spanish and French. This multilingual experience has allowed me to connect across cultures and better understand and respect differences. Language is one of humanity’s most precious intangible heritages. Without speaking a language, one cannot fully grasp the worldview of its culture. Many of my Indigenous collaborators are working to preserve their mother tongues as a form of cultural survival and resistance. By incorporating different languages in project titles, we honor and activate the diverse influences and heritages that shape the work.
While I’ve never considered myself a particularly humorous person, I’ve come to understand dark humor and satire as tools for reconstructing a sense of agency. Many survivors of colonial violence I’ve met and befriended are some of the funniest people I know. Humor and joy play a crucial role in cultural survival; they serve as forms of resistance, preventing fear from consuming us. Laughter keeps us healthy, and in doing so, we honor our ancestors who dreamed us into being.
Do you consider your investigation of historical museums and archives a kind of institutional critique?
Yes, to a certain extent. Historically, many institutions, including museums and archives, have often played exclusionary roles, shaping narratives that do not reflect the full complexity of history. Socially engaged artists and cultural workers have an unstated social contract to challenge existing structures and create space—both tangible and imagined—for a more just reality. This responsibility often involves stimulating critical reflection on institutional histories and practices because they play a significant role in shaping cultural narratives.
However, my approach is not solely about critique. I focus on collaboration with these institutions, understanding that while they have limitations, they are made up of many kindred cultural workers. The real work of change often happens behind the scenes—through ongoing dialogue, the slow and sometimes difficult process of reimagining practices and structures, and creating pathways for new narratives. It’s easy to critique institutions from the outside, but the real challenge often lies in working within those systems to affect meaningful transformation. This kind of critique is rooted in tough love because I believe society can do better, and institutions can evolve to serve the public good more inclusively.
Ultimately, this kind of engagement isn’t about calling out what’s wrong, but about forging the relationships and partnerships necessary to build something more equitable together.
How did you become involved in researching the 1629 Batavia shipwreck in Perth, Australia?
Through past works like Rhunhattan: A Tale of Two Islands and Mannahatta VR, I’ve become part of a collaborative local and global network of culture bearers, historians, researchers, writers, and cultural heritage experts surfacing the contemporary impacts of the interrelated activities of the Dutch East and West India Companies. Following the 2021 Oceans as Archive symposium where I got to present on the panel, Disrupting Imperial Geographies, co-panelist historian Kristie Flannery recommended me to join the project. This past July, I traveled to Perth, Western Australia, to meet the rest of the Mobilising VOC Collections Project Aesthetics Team, an interdisciplinary team of artists, historians, and marine archaeologists coming together to revisit this first contact story between Australia and Europe. I got to study the shipwreck’s remains that had been resting on the seafloor for centuries, along with the historic mutiny sites–it was a once-in-a-lifetime collection visit!
Can you describe your vision for the future in the face of long-standing racial and economic injustices and the ongoing climate crisis?
In a time of global polarization, our collective ability to thrive requires us to move beyond the binary thinking pattern of “us vs. them.” We must adopt relational, archipelagic, intersectional, and empathetic perspectives. This is a collaborative world, one in which we reject the scarcity mindset and work towards the dream of solidarity. We need the courage to envision a future where we can all thrive—a future built on strength and grace. This is a beautiful place built without violence; this beauty I speak of is free of the decadent aesthetics of empire embodied by luxury derived from questionable supply chains, labor, and environmental practices. Some people might view speaking in the future tense as pretentious, especially when the very notion of a future feels uncertain. However, it’s essential to desire the future, as it holds us accountable. We can’t afford to abandon optimism; it fuels our fight to rekindle our love for our natural world, and that begins with bridging divides and building relationships.
The path toward a socially and environmentally just world must be guided by historical precedent. I want to reiterate the Principles of Environmental Justice, originally laid out in 1994 [https://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.pdf]. Many vulnerable communities—historically marginalized and often not responsible for the climate crisis—remain the most at risk from its cascading impacts. This “slow violence” is an extension of centuries of colonial violence. We must listen to the needs of the younger generation inheriting this world.
What would you like viewers to take away from experiencing your work?
I want to inspire empathy, care, and wonder. I hope through experiencing my work, that viewers feel empowered to make history-informed decisions for our collective progress. During an increasingly divisive era, we need to remember that it is easy to make enemies instead of nurturing kinships, but we must strive for the latter.
Are there any current or upcoming projects you’d like to share?
I recently wrapped up a solo exhibition When Our Rivers Meet at The New-York Historical. I’m now pouring most of my energy into Gilt/Guilt, a performance-installation imagined as a speculative auction whose hauntingly luxurious collectibles reveal cascading impacts of colonial violence and environmental extraction. I’m working on several exhibitions, including one opening at the Western Australian Museum’s Shipwreck Galleries this November. I am also super excited about an olfactory sculpture commission…all of which I look forward to sharing more details when the time comes!