Kathleen Hanna visits UCI Langson OCMA for artist talk with Emily’s Sassy Lime
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Feminist icon and Bikini Kill front woman, Kathleen Hanna made an appearance at UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa Dec.14, for a discussion panel with the members of local punk band, Emily’s Sassy Lime.
Emily Ryan and sisters Wendy and Amy Yao all met in Irvine as teens in the early 1990s. Langson OCMA‘s current exhibition, “Desperate, Scared, But Social,” takes its name from the band’s ’95 debut album.
“These amazing artists and musicians are interwoven in my coming-of-age understanding of creative practice and featured in our 2025 California Biennial,” said Courtenay Finn, chief curator and director of programs.
“California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social,” focuses on youth subculture and explores the complex feelings of late adolescence and early adulthood while still presenting instances of hope and inspiration. Organized across OCMA’s Special Exhibitions and Permanent Collection pavilions, the show features 12 artists and collectives and includes photos, letters, concert footage and archival zines from Emily’s Sassy Lime’s career.
During the discussion the women presented a slide show highlighting the significance of archival work in the exhibit, and shared stories about hanging out in Orange County at Disneyland, Dippity Donuts and other locations, and touring as teenagers in the ’90s, without the help of cellphones or the internet.
“We had a 1-800 beeper that we borrowed to go on tour and we just told our parents we were at some math camp or something and to just beep us [so we could] call them back from a pay phone — which you couldn’t trace at the time because [there was] no caller ID,” said Wendy Yao.
Their resourcefulness also served them in their creative endeavors.
“As children of immigrants, we were always resourceful, whether it was taping over our parents’ Vietnamese ballroom dancing videos or repurposing cassette demos from Tower Records for our demo tapes,” Amy Yao said.
The large, pink clamshell bed sculpture in the gallery is inspired by a bed they saw on tour, which became a sort of myth among touring musicians at the time.
“The clam bed is down in the gallery and I made it with the help of a sculpture student, Emiko Groder, at UC Irvine, and it is based on a real life clam bed that I saw in Lincoln, Nebraska,” Ryan said. “I feel like many people in this room might have toured and had a show booked by this teenager who was living alone, worked in a thrift store and, after they booked the show, would go home and sleep in their clam bed.”
The three artists also shared their early interactions with Hanna and how her example and friendship motivated them to pursue their punk band aspirations.
“Kathleen was right there before we were people, before we were formed, so thank you for encouraging us,” Ryan said to Hanna.
Hanna is widely regarded as one of the defining voices of third-wave feminism, not only as the founder and front woman of Bikini Kill, but as an artist, writer and activist. She is the subject of the 2013 documentary film, “The Punk Singer” and the author of the 2024 memoir, “Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk.”
She was also a driving force behind zine culture. The self-published booklets or DIY photocopied pamphlets were an integral part of the 1990s riot grrrl feminist punk movement and many young women adopted the medium as a way to share music reviews, political ideas and personal stories.
Hanna penned the the riot grrrl manifesto in 1991. It was first published in “Bikini Kill Zine 2,” and is a declaration of third- wave feminist beliefs and ideas, credited with inspiring and galvanizing members of the growing scene.
Emily’s Sassy Lime wrote its own manifesto in the 1990s, titled GUSTO, an acronym for Gorilla Union of Sinister Teenage Opportunist. Ryan read the GUSTO manifesto at the artist talk, which underlined the belief that the three young female musicians had as much a right to be on stage as their male counterparts.
A key line: “Who says that three teenage Asian girls can’t make the crowd go wild?”
“It is funny that you read the manifesto, I was hoping that you would and I was really taken by it because I hadn’t read it in so many years,” said Hanna.
The museum offered attendees the opportunity to make their own zines with the interactive Zine Cave, a pop-up zine-making workshop from New-York-based art publisher Some Other Books. Zine Cave has installed the pop-up at multiple art book fairs, including Printed Matter’s 2025 LA Art Book Fair at ArtCenter College of Design and NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 in Queens.
Emily’s Sassy Lime’s work in “Desperate, Scared, But Social” demonstrates how substantial an impact the riot grrrl feminist punk movement had on women all over the world, including here in Orange County. The overall exhibit indicates it is still inspiring important, creative work today.
“California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social” is on view at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art at 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa, through Jan. 4.
