By Zoe Luczaj | NB Indy Arts Writer
“What people want is you. They don’t want you trying to be somebody else,” Kathleen Hanna, pioneer of the “riot grrrl” feminist punk (combining feminism, punk music and politics) and frontwoman of the band Bikini Kill, told the NB Indy.
That sentiment echoed throughout UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art on Sunday, Dec. 14 as Hanna was joined by Emily’s Sassy Lime, the Orange County-born garage punk band whose teenage, riot grrrl–era beginnings in 1993 anchor the museum’s Biennial exhibition “Desperate, Scared, but Social,” for an artist talk during the final weeks of the exhibition.
The museum’s intergenerational display celebrates the defiant disposition of adolescence. It traces the correspondence youth create through community and the pursuit of identity. The show reads like a dynamic scrapbook of teen spirit. It features an eclectic array of portraits capturing the unfiltered faces of alternative subcultures and youth-curated collections that dissect the tumult and experimentation of growing up.
That same ethos flowed into the artist talk with Emily’s Sassy Lime members — Emily Ryan and sisters Amy and Wendy Yao — alongside Kathleen Hanna as they unraveled their journeys as musicians, artists, and activists while traversing adolescence.
The band’s installation functions as a veritable archive of their collective youth. Flyers, candy wrappers, zines, and idiosyncratic keepsakes densely populate the space, inviting the viewer to navigate the chaotic youthscape.
Amy Yao describes the displays: “I would say there’s a bit of randomness and maybe some meaning. And then there’s a lot of things that are meaningful to me, but maybe there are no keys or clues to why they’re meaningful, like scraps of paper with random numbers.”
As Emily Ryan explains, her teenage artifacts were arranged to recreate a personal space.
“We want to recreate this kind of bedroom scenario. We borrowed [the mic], and we hang it from the ceiling fan so we can be amplified while we practice. And it’s probably a sketchy electrical situation.”
Beyond the bedroom, the band’s teenage experiences were shaped by resourcefulness and DIY creativity. Ryan recalled, “childhood immigrants were always resourceful, whether it was taping over our parents’ Vietnamese ballroom dancing videos, repurposing cassette demos from Tower Records for our demo tapes.”
This inventive spirit is evident in the retrospective, the band’s history, and the DIY defiance at the core of riot grrrl.
Ryan reflected on the resonance of the display for audiences across generations, picking apart a hashtag that embodied the exhibit. “This hashtag, girlhood… it felt universal, and it felt like people related to it.”
The band’s shared thread of girlhood naturally drew the attention of feminist and punk rock legend Kathleen Hanna, whose longstanding friendship with Emily’s Sassy Lime added another layer to the exhibition’s dialogue about community and expression. During the talk, Hanna emphasized the need to come together in real, shared spaces: “Us being here, alive, in this room together right now is crazy important… we’re here, and we’re actually having a conversation.”
Hanna encouraged embracing your own creative path: “Your best friend’s opinion matters. Your opinion matters. And if you follow the breadcrumbs in your head to make the art you want to make, you’re going to inspire tons of other people—way more than if you do the right thing. Stop doing the right thing.”
“Desperate, Scared, but Social” runs through January 4, 2026, offering visitors a last chance to bear witness to this dialogue on rebellion, authenticity, and community.
Visit www.OCMA.art.
