The New York-based multi-hyphenate reflects on the dynamic nature of love, detailing his experience while observing its role within several spheres of 21st century culture.

*Top and gloves RAF SIMONS,*
*trousers PRIVATE POLICY,*

PHOTOGRAPHER JING YULIN

STYLIST XUYUNER (ABBY) QI

INTERVIEWER RACHEL CHEUNG

Inﬁnite, intuitive, and made of in-betweens – love, to Chella Man, is all of those things, because “love is everything.” The multi-disciplinary artist and activist has toyed with the notion of love from an early age. As a young, Deaf, queer, Jewish, Chinese, and transgender person, Man is a walking deﬁnition of intersectionality. Unraveling the complexities of love as he has come to understand it today, the Pennsylvania-raised Brooklynite reﬂects on the signiﬁcant role of love in everyday life, proclaiming a rippling eﬀect when we choose to lead with it.

*Top and trousers MELITTA BAUMEISTER,*
*gloves MARINE SERRE,*
*shoes NIKE*

In May 2018, Man gave a TedX Talk called Becoming Him, securing a contract with IMG Models the following September. At 23-years-old, he has been most notably featured in The New York Times (2018), Gay Times (2019), and Mission Magazine (2021). He was celebrated for his creative strides in queer representation, given recognition for his culturally inﬂuential work in the Queerty Award (2019), the Pride50 Award (2019), and Dazed100 (2019). Man went on to design an exclusive hand-painted clothing capsule of garments with the infamous label Opening Ceremony, hiring an all-queer team to work on the collaboration. With the documentary Trans in Trumpland (2020) and a short ﬁlm titled The Beauty of Being Deaf (2021) in his portfolio, Man is just scraping the surface of his work as an artist and activist.

Art played a prominent role during Man’s youth. He recalls being sport and activity-oriented, participating in karate, soccer, track, piano, and guitar. “The moment I could pick up a crayon or even gather junk around the house, I fell in love with the idea of making something out of nothing – which is essentially what art is to me. All these hobbies were new ways of play, but since birth, art has and always will be the one love that is constant in my life.” While his marginalized social identities leave him vulnerable to discrimination, Man has leveraged his experience to not only be successful in the art and entertainment industries, but to inspire and validate gender non-conforming youth through his creative mediums.

Growing up in Mechanicsburg, PA to a Jewish mother and Chinese father, Man recalled his youth, remarking that he “won the family lottery.” When it came to parental guidance in discovering his identities, Man expressed heartfelt gratitude towards his family and the role they played in his self-explora-tion: “My mom works so hard. She is a white Jewish woman who is not disabled, and cisgender. So, having me at the time,” Man said, “and not knowing who I would be or who I would become, she had to unlearn so many things at an early age and ﬁgure out how to love someone,” he said. “How do you love someone when you don't understand their diﬀerences?”

When he moved to New York City to study at The New School in 2017, Man began to share the story of his transition. It was on his YouTube channel where his story ﬁrst gained digital traction, documenting his medical experience of top surgery and testosterone all while continuing his navigation through the world as a biracial and Deaf individual who was also falling in love. Capturing his most intimate moments alongside his girlfriend MaryV, Man’s videos deeply resonated with trans and non-binary teens around the world. He inspired the lives of the isolated, lonely and misunderstood, validating their experience while simultaneously advocating for greater representation and visibility for LGBTQIA+ communities.

*Top and trousers PRIVATE POLICY,*
*shoes REEBOK*

In an epistolary form video titled Moments of Mom on his YouTube channel, Man’s mother expresses, “Your sex was not important to me, I loved you immediately.” While his family was largely supportive of his journey towards self-expression, Man concludes that it is ultimately the ability to look beyond differences and learn to love despite them which are a true reﬂection of unconditional love. His hometown, however, was less accepting of Man’s norm-defying nature. “I sum up the area by saying Trump came to speak at my high school right before the election,” Man said, emphasizing a lack of representation in every way possible: a predominantly white environment devoid of people of color, where there were few disabled individu-als, let alone queer people. “Where I grew up was not favorable. I learned very early on how to live in scarcity, and to this day I'm healing and reminding myself that abundance is possible in different ways – beyond gender, disability, race, and sexuality, there’s love, kindness, joy, pleasure, and play. I'm relearning all of that now.”

“ Where I grew up was not favorable. I learned very early on how to live in scarcity, and to this day I’m healing and reminding myself that abundance is possible in different ways – beyond gender, disability, race, and sexuality, there’s love, kindness, joy, pleasure, and play. I’m relearning all of that now.”

— Chella Man

When asked to define love, Man’s colloquial response captures the essence of love as he has come to understand it: “Love is the good, the bad, and the in between, of course. Like anything, I believe love is a continuum. Love can release you from all the constructs in the world. It can grant you clarifica-tion to what you truly care about. Love is intuition, that invisible pull that grounds you and also can tear you apart. It allows you to grow. Love is so powerful because it is everything. It's every emotion,” he said.

Given the intersectionality of his identities, Man believes it is these diﬀerent parts of his experience that have allowed him “to see the continuum of love in a broader sense than I believe most people are granted,” he said. “With my foot in so many places, there's this large, expansive perspective of the way various people or experiences and communities view life, how we translate and interpret certain moments. Love is part of all of that, and for that reason, I've been able to have such a dynamic view of what love can be.” Man goes on to address the marginalized experience, speculating how othered individuals draw power from love in more ways than the dominant identities might: “I believe we [as marginalized people] are often challenged with our experience of love, we are challenged to hold onto our love as we experience discrimination. Sometimes that makes you want to shut down, or disassociate, but holding onto love is imperative. To hold onto love, you have to hold onto pain, which is a continuous balance.” Man believes it is resilience through adversity which allows us to prioritize the power of love, ultimately allowing it to transcend through various difficult experiences in our lives. When asked how love is relevant when it comes to conversations surrounding the intersectionality of race, gender, culture, religion, Man remarks that love is crucial in these spaces. “It's incredibly relevant when we speak about race, gender, culture, disability, sexuality, and religion, because unless we lead with that compassion, we're just going to be hostile, we’d build barriers that don't need to be between us. Love is crucial to our journey towards understanding ourselves and one another in these spaces, despite the differences.”

Through performance, motion capture, painted stills, and more, Man’s work addresses the layers of complexity behind how we learn to perceive and achieve love in the modern world. Currently, he is a mentor for the Silver Art Projects, has plans of artist residencies, and is preparing for his role in the upcoming second season in the DC Universe series Titans as Jericho, a mute crime ﬁghter.

Making waves as an outspoken voice for inclusivity and representation of the marginalized, Man emphasized the ripple eﬀect when intentions of love are prioritized in our daily lives: “You create love in your community by leading with it. You create it by not reacting with solely anger and projecting that scarcity mindset or creating hierarchies — because we already have enough of those,” he said. “Lead with love, with the intention of choosing love, and it will create a domino effect.” He leaves us with a ﬁnal reminder to discard all stereotypes we have of love, admitting, “It's not what you see in the movies, it's not one thing, it's not one memory. Love is a continuum. It's everything and nothing, it's constantly changing, and so when you ﬁnd it, allow it to adapt, allow it to develop as you do.”

This cover story and interview was published in The WOW N° 6.

Issue6 available now.

Photographer: JINGYU LIN @ KRAMER + KRAMER

Stylist : XUYUNER (ABBY) QI

Grooming & Make-up: SHAINA EHRLICH @ KRAMER + KRAMER

Casting Director: ANGELIKI SOFRONAS

Talent: CHELLA MAN

Production: KRAMER + KRAMER

CHELLA MAN

FILMS OF THE PAST

FERNANDA LY