Ayoto Ataraxia

Ayoto Ataraxia was born 鄭博榕 in 1985 in Kaohsiung. He is the only son of the eldest son, descendants of 鄭成功 also known as Koxinga or the Prince of Yanping. In 1992, his family immigrated from Taiwan to Australia, and he took on the name of Paul Po-Jung Cheng until 2011 as part of his assimilation into white Australia. He attended Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy, in 2006 and graduated in 2009 with his bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design. Ataraxia moved to Shanghai before moving to Beijing shortly after in 2009 and began working as a fashion photographer. In 2011, he changed his name to Paul Jung and moved to New York in 2012. He earned his master’s in Fashion Photography in 2013 from the School of Visual Arts. He continued to work as a photographer and started a brand with fashion designer Melitta Baumeister between the years of 2013 and 2016. In 2017, Ataraxia moved to Berlin. With the onset of the pandemic and the rise of Anti-Asian hate, he stopped associating with his assimilation name and took on the artist name Ayoto Ataraxia. In 2021, he began producing the podcast Asian Provocation. He recorded three musical albums, No Country for Diasporic Men, Tokyo Recordings and the Official Soundtrack for his debut feature film, which he directed and edited, My Film with Andrei, OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Document a Sex Party. He currently resides in Berlin.