Siting Yao
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Siting Yao is a Chinese graphic designer and independent publisher living in London. She works with risograph printing and hand-bound books, focusing on queer identity, language, and memory. Her projects include “Lesbian Slang in Chinese” and “She is Writing,” both linking personal stories to shared experience. She often experiments with paper, ink, and translation. Through this work, she builds community, forms connections, and keeps these stories in circulation.
Q: What first drew you to publishing as both a creative and political tool?
A: What first drew me to publishing as both a creative and political tool is its ability to turn personal expression into collective dialogue. Publishing, to me, is both a space of imagination and resistance. In many places, including where I come from, freedom of publishing is still restricted — that limitation made me deeply aware of how powerful it is to be able to publish freely. Through creative publishing, I can experiment with form, language, and material to find new ways of telling stories that might otherwise be unheard. It’s not just about sharing information, but about creating experiences that question systems and invite reflection. As a quote I love says, “Art must continually intervene in politics until politics ceases to intervene in art.”
Q: In “Lesbian Slang in Chinese,” you reimagine a dictionary as a manifesto. How did that project begin?
A: “Lesbian Slang in Chinese” began from a feeling of invisibility — the lack of visibility and representation of Chinese queer women in both social and cultural contexts.
I noticed that the dominant narratives around queerness were often shaped by Western and male perspectives, while voices from Chinese-speaking communities — especially queer women — remained largely overlooked or marginalized. This invisibility made me wonder: what do Chinese queer women sound and look like in my own language?
The project started as a process of collecting and archiving words that circulate within Chinese queer women communities — some playful, some coded, some carrying layers of pain and intimacy. Through that, I wanted to create a linguistic and visual space where our existence could be seen and heard. As a Chinese queer feminist, I use printing and publishing as both a creative and political practice to explore Asian queer feminism and the intersections of language, culture, and identity.
By reimagining a dictionary as a manifesto, I turned what is usually a neutral reference book into a living document of resistance. Each entry is not only a definition, but a declaration — of love, defiance, and self-recognition. The work also became a bridge between audiences of different languages: it invites English-speaking readers to engage with the nuances of Chinese queer expression, while allowing Chinese readers to reclaim and celebrate their own linguistic heritage. In this way, the project is both a translation and a transformation — a small act of visibility in a space where we have long been unseen.
Q: “She is Writing” centers on women’s voices and agency. What does writing mean to you personally?
A: Writing, for me, is both the simplest and the most powerful way to express myself. It gives form to feelings that are otherwise unspeakable — a space where I can think, dream, and reclaim agency. I write diaries, poems, commentaries, and fanfictions; each of them becomes a tool to reorganize the chaos in my head and to find a gateway for my desires. Writing allows me to see myself more clearly — not as a fixed identity, but as someone constantly in dialogue with language, emotion, and memory. It’s a practice of self-recognition and empowerment, a quiet act of making myself visible in my own words.
Q: You often work with risograph printing and hand-binding. What keeps those hands-on methods exciting for you?
A: In the digital age, the role of printed media has fundamentally shifted. It’s no longer the dominant way we communicate information — and that loss of function has, paradoxically, opened up new creative possibilities. What draws me to risograph printing is not efficiency, but its material honesty.
The vivid, slightly misaligned layers, the unpredictable textures of ink, and the subtle imperfections all speak to a process that embraces chance and tactility.
Each print carries evidence of time and touch — small human errors that digital perfection can never reproduce.
For me, risograph printing becomes a conversation between control and accident, between repetition and uniqueness. When I combine it with hand-binding, that dialogue extends into the realm of intimacy and care. The resulting object exists somewhere between a publication and an artwork — not a product of mass production, but a personal, living artifact.
Unlike digital perfection or mass production, these methods preserve the traces of the maker’s hand — a quiet resistance against uniformity and disposability.
Q: Living between cultures and languages, how do you decide what stories to tell and in what form?
A: I tend to tell stories that come from my own experiences — moments and feelings I have lived through and care deeply about. I believe that speaking from within a community allows me to approach the story with authenticity and humility, rather than from an outsider’s perspective. Living between cultures and languages has shaped the way I see and interpret the world, and it often informs which stories I choose to tell. I am particularly drawn to stories that can connect people and make the invisible visible, rather than those that reinforce stereotypes. At the early stages of a project, I experiment with multiple forms — writing, print, photography, or handmade objects — to explore how each medium might best convey the emotion and nuance of the story. I then select the form that feels most true to the theme, allowing the story and its expression to grow together. For me, form is never just a tool; it is part of the story itself, shaping how it is experienced and understood.
Q: Across your projects, there’s a quiet sense of care. Do you see publishing itself as a kind of community-building?
A: Yes, I see publishing itself as a form of community-building and a way to connect people.
The process of creating a publication — from generating ideas and contributing content to collaborating on design, printing, and distribution — allows for meaningful interactions and the formation of bonds within a community. It’s a space where people can share knowledge, experiences, and perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked or marginalized. Publishing also has the power to extend beyond those directly involved: once a project is released, it increases the visibility of the community, amplifying voices and stories that are often invisible in mainstream discourse.
For me, the act of publishing is inherently an act of care. It is about thinking of both the contributors and the audience, and creating something that holds space for people to feel seen, understood, and connected. Each publication is not only a record or artifact, but also a living node in a network of relationships — a way of fostering dialogue, solidarity, and mutual recognition. In this sense, publishing is as much about process as it is about product; the care invested in making it ripples out into the community it engages.
