My 2025 finished on a few noteworthy notes, one of which was covering not one, but two weddings at Accent Sisters. On December 30th, 2025, two couples—Xuezhu Jenny Wang and Mikaela Ekstrand, Yixue Li and Yuxiang Dong—were married in a joint ceremony that took place at the gallery-cum-queer-speakeasy-bookstore near Union Square. The pairs of fiancées were introduced with a game of two truths and a lie, a prompt I hate being asked of because I can never think clever enough on my feet. Wang and Ekstrand, the art world power couple, talked about cats, getting wedding dresses, and ring-shopping, while the impromptu caught Dong Yuxiang and Yixue Li, an artist couple of eight years, off guard, turning the jest into a genuine confession of advice: It takes two people who work hard at sustaining love to do it. They had heard there was going to be a wedding between Wang and Ekstrand, who have been long-time friends with Accent Sisters' founder, Jiaoyang Li, so they got their marriage license the day before, and took the opportunity to join in on the occasion.

The joint wedding, celebrating love and cuffing season, was held alongside performances, readings, speed dating games, and even tarot readings. The upbeat programming seemed to guide the guests into collective confusion, for no one knew what to expect, but the couples made sure to deliver their celebration on all counts.

Jiaoyang, who’s also officiating in a white gown stamped in the center by a thin red cross, says she got her marriage license to marry two of her gay friends during the pandemic, when this was a more difficult feat than usual. It was an action done in the name of friendship, love, and “just because it’s so much fun.” The pairs kiss and hug, becoming one for a moment after what must have been an “I do.”

“No ‘we are gathered here today’ or anything,” a woman wearing gold says to my left while papers are being signed. Katya Grokhovsky, the founding director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial, a point at which many of the collaborators and attendees are collectively intertwined, signs her name on the dotted line.“Who’s going to be our second witness?” Anna Mikaela yells into the crowd who have lost themselves amongst each other. The same shining woman, Christen Clifford, catches her question like a bouquet, raises her right hand, and waves.

The magazine 4N is advertised in the intermission. It’s a publication that features international talents who create work under conditions of cultural exchange and hybridity.

The papers were signed, and it was official. Dong Yuxiang and Yixue Li, and Anna Mikaela and Jenny Wang were wed respectively. Then, the readings began.

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Sofia Thiệu D’Amico was asked by Do Tuong Linh which identity she chooses to call herself by in a script read aloud between the two. This, she answers, “depends on the dinner table,” “depends on who’s angry,” and I guess it really does all depend on where one stands. “Do you ever feel at home?” Sofia asks. “Only temporarily,” Do Tuong responds, “usually at airport cafes, where everyone is equally suspicious.” As the conversation turned into a dialogue on belonging and the audience fell into deep contemplation, the women ring a bell to signal when theirs is done.

Jin Jin Xu presents Ping Pong Diplomacy to a YouTube video titled What Are You Afraid Of? which displays text across the screen in a similar manner of the DVD logo. The work on view was made as a collective between her and Jiaoyang between the United States and China during the tumult of 2020, a relationship still, if not always rocky. The title, as much of a symbol as it is a literal telling, is inspired by the 1971 spectacle that opened a door between the two countries when a Chinese team captain gave an American player a ride to the international table tennis tournament in Japan, an act of a similarly ideological and real olive branch passed over the net, between countries on opposite sides of the same table.

In terms of the performance, it’s hitting a ping pong ball with a paddle haphazardly alone in a dark room. Unlike the very real implications of what the act represents, this is fun, and Jin Jin is laughing too, inciting the audience to sing along with her to a song in a language I don’t know, but whose melody I can still hum. Sports and politics: one tries to leave it all on the field. Diplomacy is a game of ping pong, back and forth.

Anna Ting Möller reads a story she titles Perfect Strangers that describes her trip back to New York from California on a Greyhound bus that “carried connotations of freedom.” She had too many suitcases full of art materials to take a plane, and anyway, how would one explain the luggage full of fermenting kombucha to TSA? It was a journey like most, solitary, though peppered by moments of solace shared with strangers. I can’t help but giggle when she says she cried upon seeing the sign to New Jersey, because I totally get it, having done the same on multiple occasions myself.

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The celebration contains, and therefore provokes, thoughts about love, relationships, identity, and belonging. In the last performance I see before I leave, I’m asked by curator Chiarina Chen to “think of one word that makes dating work in New York,” after being instructed to close my eyes and meditate on the feeling of its frustrations. I feel the agita of all my previous lovers as usual but don’t think of a word until a man standing above my seat asks if I’m going to participate as the woman behind the mic starts counting down from three. My first thought? Tolerance, in every sense of the word, for better or for worse, and I think you know the rest.