Maria Than is a British-French-Vietnamese artist, designer and educator based in London. She is co-founder of Ricebox Studio, and in 2024 her exhibition Homage to Quan Âm was on show at arebyte Gallery in London. The exhibition was part of (and the result of) her exploration of her Vietnamese roots, using tools such as augmented reality and AI to recreate and interact with the “maximalist East Asian Buddhist art” that she grew up with. Her work as an artist, educator, blogger and activist shows the power of creativity in dealing with personal and social issues, the importance of curiosity and the value of sharing knowledge.
For this interview, Than chose to send her answers as voice memos, presenting me with the challenge of how to properly capture the highly interesting, slightly obsessive and sometimes delightfully chaotic nature of these recordings – she really did stop in the middle of a voice memo to double check who directed Billy Elliot and then congratulated herself for getting it right. It was a funny reflection of the organized chaos of her work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Your 2024 exhibition Homage to Quan Âm was a journey into your multicultural childhood and your Vietnamese roots. How has your art helped you to explore your heritage and dive deeper into your identity?
It’s important to mention that as a child and in my teenage years, I developed a lot of strong internalized racism and I kind of fragmented my identity within the different cultures I was growing up in. As a Vietnamese girl that was born in the UK but now lived in Paris, and basically between teenagehood and around 2023, I pretty much hated my culture deeply. The reason things changed was that I wanted to dive into the history behind very specific types of Vietnamese art.
If you ever go to a Vietnamese restaurant or even a Vietnamese Buddhist temple, or really anything related to East Asia, you will see this very specific type of what I call maximalist East Asian Buddhist art, that is found in all these places, including our homes. It’s the one thing that, from a visual and artistic standpoint, has tied so many of us second generation Vietnamese immigrants together, because these are the things we’ve grown up with and kind of accepted, without ever looking into it further. So my entire exhibition and my current journey into Vietnamese Buddhism all started because I was trying to understand where these specific images were from. I wanted to know if there was a name for this genre or style, and that led me to talk to my family a lot. And not only my family, but also other Vietnamese British people and Vietnamese immigrants around the world.
One thing we all realized was that we don’t really know where these images come from, and that started this whole journey into looking at, historically, how Tibetan art for example has inspired a lot of that look, and how the rise of early Photoshop used by aunties and uncles was probably one of the reasons why these images are so insanely maximalist and all over the place. But that maximalist aesthetic finally made me understand why I am the way I am as a creative, because this was something I received a lot of criticism for in university: I was too maximalist in my aesthetic, but it wasn’t structured, it wasn’t systemized; it was very chaotic.
When I started the exhibition Homage to Quan Âm, the first thing I asked during the development with arebyte Gallery was ‘How do I communicate organized chaos?’ Because maximalism in Vietnamese is part of our culture and our way of living, and I wanted to bring that chaos into the gallery, but in a way that was structured through storytelling.
So art was the reason why I wanted to explore my heritage and dive deeper into my identity; I was just trying to understand where these Vietnamese Buddhist art pieces were coming from in the first place. From there, I created my own through my practice as a media artist.
In the Netherlands, the marginalization and racism that East Asian Dutch people face has only recently been acknowledged as a social issue. How far along is this conversation in the UK?
I want to preface my answer with the fact that I’m not representative of the whole community of East Asian British people, this is just my personal experience based on what I’ve observed across various creative industries, universities, and so on and so forth.
The conversation around marginalization and racism of East Asian British people in the UK is definitely a discussion that has been ongoing since the lockdowns were lifted and there was a big rise of hate crime against ESEA (East Asian and Southeast Asian) citizens. As a discussion, it’s definitely something that has been pushed quite far along in the past couple of years.
One of the projects we worked on at Ricebox around 2022, when lockdowns were fully lifted, was On Your Side. On Your Side is the UK’s first national helpline service for ESEA victims of hate crime. Basically, it’s a website that allows you to report when you as an East Asian or Southeast Asian person have undergone any kind of racism. We were brought in to develop the UX/UI, and this was one of the first projects in which we were working alongside so many different charities, community groups and representatives of different ESEA communities across London. And that’s very much when we started understanding the scope of how bad things had gotten since COVID, with a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment – and just anti-Asian sentiment in general, because usually the people that yell at me aren’t exactly aware of which Asian I am, they don’t give a shit. They just want to insult me because I’m Asian.
I’ve lived in the UK since 2015, and there was definitely some casual racism before COVID, but it was never overtly violent towards myself. However, after COVID I did notice a shift where, as much as the conversation was much louder (thank God it was), there were so many small instances where I received verbal abuse. A notable one was a homeless man insulting me and my boyfriend. My boyfriend’s white and I’m Asian, and he was very aggressively telling my boyfriend he shouldn’t be dating an Asian woman, because he’s diluting his skin color.
So definitely, in terms of experience, it’s worse in my opinion. But the conversation is better in terms of people in charge, partners, charities, activists and community groups. There’s now a much wider discussion on how ESEA people have been propelled within the stereotype of the model minority. For a long time, so much of the racism and marginalization we received was due to that model minority myth, and we’re finally starting to break it down through discussion at university and within different community groups. So I would so it’s happening, but we’re definitely not there yet.
Together with Anna Tsuda, Bristy Azmi and Safiya Ahmed, you are co-founder of Ricebox Studio. Could you tell a bit more about this studio and its core project, Techbox?
Yes, I absolutely can!
Ricebox was created straight out of university, after we graduated from our BA Graphic Design in 2019 at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL. So how did we get together? Basically all four of us are Asian, and our staple food is rice, hence the name. But what actually binds us is our drive for trying to make the world a better place no matter what; from a simple conversation between two people all the way to worldwide campaigns.
The majority of our projects have always been around social good or themes regarding social political issues. Straight out of uni we worked with Child Rights International Network, who hired us as design fellows to work on our first big project, the Red Cloud Project. The Red Cloud Project focused on menstrual health, period education and tackling period stigma, specifically through the lens of religion and culture. For this project, we started using augmented reality.
So our studio uses creative tech for social good, but it’s split in two. The first strand does design commissions, where we’ll do things like UX/UI, web design, publication design, branding, illustration and animation, and sometimes even artistic interventions and commissions. Then on the other side we’ve got the educational branch, and that’s called Techbox. We consider Techbox our flagship project, because that’s how we pass on everything we learn in creative tech, so anything that has to do with creative AI, augmented reality, immersive design, and also creative coding. We want to pass on that knowledge to the younger generation and to marginalized communities, because we had to learn all that stuff on our own.
Although we went to university, our programme was not at all adapted to digital design or creative technology – not their fault, by the way, it just wasn’t the approach. One of the things that bound us together was that we were the only ones willing to actually experiment with emerging technology. So, for example, we built our own arcade machines, designed and developed our own video games and even built a 3D printing machine from scratch using floppy discs. It was us using nothing but Stack Overflow and Google. This was before ChatGPT was even a thing, which I’m very jealous of. I’m not gonna lie, it was a really horrible process. I remember how stressed we were about learning all these different tools, and how much the internet was actually a very unfriendly place to ask for help.
I’m not even gonna tell you about Stack Overflow; people are horrible there, and you need experience to know what questions you’re supposed to ask to find the right answer. It’s not about the answer, it’s always about coming up with the right question. That’s the one thing we want to do with Techbox: we help students and marginalized communities to ask themselves the right question when they’re dealing with, for example, augmented reality and storytelling. What can they do with those tools, what kind of message can they convey, what kind of questions can they put into people’s minds to get them to think about a social political issue in a different way?
It’s all about learning to harness different forms of emerging technologies, in a way that’s embedded in your process in a meaningful way. One of the things we realized is that when you’re learning augmented reality, creative coding, Arduino, all that stuff, you’ll go on the internet and look at videos and you’ll try to piece things together on your own. However, sometimes you need that extra push to see how you can actually use the tech in the project, rather than just learning the software for the sake of it. What differentiates Techbox from the usual workshops or the teaching we do at university, is that it’s catered to beginners. The workshops and hackathons are designed to actively push people to look at creative tech through the lens of storytelling and activism, and see how it can be reused within their own skills.
We really want people to know that just because you don’t have any experience in creative tech, it doesn’t mean that you can’t start embedding some form of it in your existing practice, even if you’re working on a sculpture. It’s so doable.
Through your blog ‘Maria tries to understand’, you’ve documented your learning process on topics like AI, programming, and augmented reality. I always find it inspiring and refreshing when artists are so open about their process, rather than presenting their work just in its finished, closed-off form. What made you decide to share it in this way?
I really need to either delete or update that blog, because I haven’t updated it in so long. I’ve got really bad ADHD and I abandon things halfway through. However, one thing that does not stop is me trying to understand.
The reason I created the blog was because what I write is the way I talk to people around me and my friends. I’m highly obsessive with whatever the fuck I’m reading at the moment, and I’m willing to chew your ear off and talk for hours and hours and hours and hours about the topic, until you tell me to fuck off because you’re so done listening to me. That’s something I’m working on, by the way, it’s not fun for everyone. But that blog was basically my way of trying to organize my thoughts, because I was exploring so much at once.
I created the blog when I had a depression and burnout that lasted for quite a while, and then suddenly one day I snapped out of it. I wanted to learn so much and go back to my tutorials, open all my bookmarks and finally dive into generative AI, creative coding, Python and augmented reality, and learn how much they work together. And because I went from doing fuck all to suddenly doing so much, I was getting incredibly overwhelmed and talking to people was not enough anymore, so I needed a written outlet to help organize it properly. But also, I needed people to look at it because I was trying to convince everyone that AR and AI is super super fun, and not everybody agreed yet. So I think of my blog as a mix of me needing an output and also wanting to share the process to try and convince creatives around me. Also, I wanted to see if anybody agreed or disagreed with the thoughts I had, because those conversations are super super super fun.
So ‘Maria tries to understand’ is like a short-term extension of me being me. It’s literally a snapshot of what I do on a daily basis whenever I try to process something interesting. Which I guess is exactly what a blog is for. Yeah, I just stated the obvious, sorry.
The use of AI in art (and in general) has become a very contentious topic in recent years. You’ve advocated for embracing AI as a force for good, rather than pushing it away. At the risk of asking you to write an entire essay: how can we mitigate the problems with AI while continuing to develop it?
It really depends on who you’re talking to, because there’s a big difference in responsibility and accountability, depending on if you’re an individual artist versus an institution, a governmental body, a company or an agency. In terms of individuals and community groups, the very first, very obvious thing is education.
At Ricebox we’re currently trialing a generative and classification AI brief in universities, because we find it absurd that there’s not a proper module of generative AI in so many universities at the moment. Generative AI has been on the forefront of the media for the past years and it’s been talked about for so long, yet so many universities in the UK are not actually teaching a proper module. Instead they’re trying to stifle the use of AI in general, and that’s silly. I’m sorry, it’s just silly. It’s very naive to think these tools are going to disappear. I’m at a point where I have problems with them existing, but I’m also very aware that they’re going to stay. In order to mitigate it, we have to use it with intent and purpose, and be very vocal about the criticism we have about these tools.
So one of the things we did with our students, for example, when we taught them the AI brief in graphic design at University of Greenwich, is we immediately had a discussion and session around the ethics. We covered stuff like authorship, the environmental costs, as well as the ethics of image data sets in general, ghost workers, privacy and surveillance. There’s so many themes that had to be covered within AI ethics in the creative industry, and we had to make sure that the students grew their own opinions before they started actually working with AI. In order for you to define intent in your process, you gotta know shit you’re not okay with and shit you’re happy to do. Generative AI has pushed people in the world of art to strengthen their values and their principles in their process, and I think that’s fantastic.
One of the best ways to mitigate the problems with AI is while you’re developing it, because you can say what’s wrong with it, and what the limitations are within your process. You’re doing it by actually involving it in your practice and by testing it, which helps it develop. Also, a lot of education has to be done. I’m sorry, but a blanket ban on the use of AI across all universities makes no sense. Students are going to use it, and you have to teach them how to do it properly. So the onus is on the educators.
Another thing is looking into different people and collectives that are working at creating better images of AI. For instance, this organisation called Better Images of AI actually works with students and artists to develop images that represent AI in a less magical sci-fi way. It forces us to look at AI as something that is done by humans for humans, as opposed to just this magical object that we see as separate to us; it’s a tool developed by humans that contains a lot of human bias.
Something else – sorry I’m throwing a lot at you – that could be helpful is developing a very strong sense of rigor and discipline in your process. You should have that anyway, but what happened with generative AI is that people will try and use it to skip to the very end. With the rise of generative AI tools, we’ve completely removed the structural process from the generative process, which makes no sense: all creative processes come in those two terms. You’ve got the generative process – ideation, brainstorming, shooting the shit, basically just pure experimentation – and then you got the structural process, which is the bit where you take everything and you iterate and test and curate and edit and try and evaluate. With younger creatives and students, that’s definitely something I want to confront.
One last thing – sorry – to add is that there’s also a lot that we as artists, creators and individuals cannot do, and we have to understand that as well. Like, the whole Adobe thing: I absolutely abhor Adobe as a company, but I’m also deeply dependent on it because everyone uses Adobe software. We tried using open source tools on a project once, and it did not go well at all. As an individual you’re gonna have to make some sacrifices, and it’s up to you to decide what you’re okay with. The Adobe CC Suite is basically milking money from so many creatives, using a horrifying subscription system that is basically a scam at this point. And I hold a lot of concerns with the tools I use within generative AI as well, but I’m aware that I can’t do much about it in a practical sense.
I can talk, I can advocate, I can go on panels and discuss this issue, I can say and teach as much as I want. But unless I’m in one of those companies, there’s a lot I can’t do. So you have to manage expectations in terms of what you can and can’t change, and decide what you’re okay with. I don’t blame people for not using generative AI because they believe it’s just completely wrong, that’s completely valid too.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me! My final question: on the Ricebox Studio website, you describe yourself as a film nut with a particular love for original soundtracks. Are there any hidden gem soundtracks that you’d like to recommend?
Oh, so many.
So there’s one that’s a classic. It’s not really a hidden gem, right? But for me, it’s an absolute classic that I know creatives – especially digital creators and digital artists – like, because it’s so dystopic. It’s the Utopia soundtrack. Not the show on Amazon Prime, but the original British Utopia by Channel 4. So the soundtrack is by the same guy who did the soundtrack for The White Lotus, I think. And his name is – bear with me for a second – Cristobal Tapia de Veer. I think it’s fantastic to not only work with as a background sound, but if you really listen to it, I mean, my God, the sound design, the use of the breathing, the melodies, and just how impactful it is from an emotional standpoint. It’s riddled with anxiety, but it’s an anxiety that you kind of want to confront and fight. Maybe this is just in my head, but every time I listen to the Utopia soundtrack, it literally feels like I’m about to fight my own anxiety as a person.
The other soundtrack that I really, really love. Okay. So this is again, not really a hidden gem, but it needs to be at the top, top, top: it’s the soundtrack for both Pokémon Blue and Pokémon Gold. I mean the first generation Pokémon game and the second generation Pokémon game. Both games have one of the most beautiful and most well-crafted soundtracks I’ve ever heard using the most insane of constraints. Because it’s like 8-bit and 16-bit, one of the composers said that they had to approach the music the same way they approach classical music, using loads and loads of different layers, and using 8-bit and 16-bit to try and recreate those layers. And it works! If you listen to people on YouTube replaying it on the violin or the piano, they’ll do this thing where they’ll ask people to guess if it’s Mozart or if it’s Pokémon, and loads of people get confused. Because ultimately it’s so beautifully crafted, yet it’s packaged in this very childlike, very naive packaging of 8-bit and 16-bit. But my God, is it so complex. I just love the contradiction of the soundtrack. Such a simple instrument, such a complex soundtrack.
And finally, my last one, and this is an actual hidden gem. This is a real hidden gem: the soundtrack for Billy Elliot – the original film by, what the fuck is his name? Stephen Daldry? Or is it that other guy? I never get the director right. Oh, it is Stephen Daldry, go me! – I know that film by heart for some reason. I got really obsessed at the age of 15, and I watched it every single day for a summer. I don’t know why, but the point is that the soundtrack of that film has marked me forever.
And it took me a week to actually find a downloadable file of that soundtrack to put on my iPod back in 2011. On YouTube, you only had the scenes themselves. So I had to download the scenes and listen to the whole dialogue with the music in the background. Then, one day, I found a very obscure file on LimeWire or NewTorrent that was finally the original file of the soundtrack. And yeah, it’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard in my life.
It’s not as hard to find now, and I recommend everyone listen to the original film soundtrack. Not the songs by T-Rex and The Clash, the actual soundtrack by – what’s his name? – Stephen Warbeck. Highly recommend.
More Maria Than:
Discussing her work during a Desktop Tour
Interview: Generative AI, Storytelling & Heritage
Interview with Creative Lives in Progress
Website