Afternoon coffee with creative director and producer Sylvia Suli

Over a chai latte, soothing indie music and heavy rainfall, Sylvia tells Aaliyah Harris about her thoughts on art, heritage, relationships and all things race.

By Aaliyah Harris

Credit: Sylvia Suli

After greeting with a hug and a quick, ‘Hello, how have you been?’, the all-round talent from East London is welcoming when she speaks about her journey into the creative industries. Sylvia Suli says, “I freelance. I'm a director, producer, musician and I take photographs”.

Sylvia started building her portfolio at Oxford University, where she collaborated on a unique project with her friends. Skin Deep Magazine was created in 2014, with aims to build a network that ‘amplifies voices of colour through discussions of race, politics and activism’. She says, “Our first issue holds a very special place in my heart”.

Skin Deep grew from a forum started by Sylvia and joint Editor’s Anuradha Henriques and Lina Abushouk. Sylvia, who is of Chinese heritage says, “there wasn't enough conversation around race especially in an institution that has been in history very, predominantly white”.

Credit: Sylvia Suli

The trio, Sylvia, Anuradha who has a mixed background of Indian and Jamaican coupled with Lina Abushouk who is Sudanese and grew up in Malaysia worked together to produce the unified platform.

Skin Deep’s goals were simple, to give a voice to people of colour and to collaborate with as Sylvia puts it, “People who are interesting and who are not Caucasian”.

Surprisingly, Skin Deep had yet to converse about an issue which affects many ethnic groups, culture clash in the world of dating. The stigma of dating people from different cultures to your own is a challenge faced especially by young people in our current and most open-minded generations’, Y and Z. Sylvia and I agreed that it’s important to discuss the complexities faced in multicultural relationships.

“Having Chinese parents from a culture where they stigmatise certain communities is something that I have to live with. But I’m all for interracial relationships.”

Parent’s getting involved in their children’s love life is nothing new or out of the ordinary, but that control stays throughout adulthood within numerous East-Asian communities. She says: “I completely understand if you want to date within your own culture because that makes sense also. You have shared common areas”.

As a Chinese woman marriage isn’t always presented as a personal choice to make, and it can be taught as something you should aspire to, she says: “I am expected to marry but I don't want to. I have had arrangements made but I've never gone through with it because I'm a wild child!”

“So long as that they’re not Black or Brown and they’re not a woman, (parents) they’re fine with it. I can be attracted (to them) but I can't see a future, which is sad and tragic”, says Sylvia. Traditional relationships of a man and woman from the same background are accepted.

She says, “I know that people say you’ve got to fight for it [love] but It's so tiring. I don't want to despair my parents who've abandoned everything just so I can shag a guy”.

Parents play a part in the stigma of culture clashing, but many people like Sylvia feel that those who aren’t people of colour are often unaware of the challenges that other ethnicities face when interracially dating. This could be as simple as experiencing racism from your own family members, Sylvia says: “That's a real thing. Especially as women of colour, we can't forget when you're dating a privileged, white, straight boy that there are things you need to be aware of and very careful with.

As a joke, I say the reason why I date white boys is because I can make them feel guilty every day for being with me – which is awful!” she laughs. Pressure, guilt and an increase in racism are just a few problems that many people face when dating interracially.

Sylvia says, “It’s rare to find someone who understands and knows their place when dating a woman of colour without going into the fetishization of it”. Fantasizing over an ‘exotic’ idea about people of colour is long rooted in the history of Western culture and taking the responsibility to learn about your partners' heritage and background is important.

Sylvia says, “I see friends who date white boys and obviously he has a pattern. Young girls need to be aware that this desire is socially constructed”. It works both ways Sylvia says, “I'm sure the reason why I dated white boys, was that they all looked like Leonardo DiCaprio who I obsessed with because the movies are always about white boys”.

Dating a person based on their culture is different from doing so based on their skin colour. Cultural factors can involve the person’s values and way of life. Culture clashing is still predominant today, to which Sylvia says, “It's weird because we live in a very globalised world and society”.

Although London is full of diverse, ethnic communities there is still lots of stigmas attached to interracial dating.