ARTIST STATEMENT
Influenced by my family’s Korean stories, I am fascinated in the importance of
speech and how stories are relayed mimetically from one person to another and
their ability to initiate a change in behavior. As Roland Barthes describes in his
book, Mythologies, I am interested in cultural studies of modern myths dictated in
a system of communication as a type of speech.
Although I was raised in America, my childhood "self" is "Korean"—having lived
in Korea from 3-6 years old. My family’s process of assimilation into an American
life has greatly impacted my work. I have found that my understanding of the
Korean culture has been primarily through my mother’s cautionary stories. I was
raised to believe that sleeping with an electric fan on in an enclosed space results
in death from asphyxiation; eating sugar right after eating crabmeat creates a
deathly internal poison; and stepping on cold floors without wearing socks causes
infertility. The traditional Korean stories that I have heard from my mother had the
unintended effect of making me anxious and phobic, but also had the fortunate
effect of giving me continuous ideas for my sculptures.
I form initial ideas for my work from my family’s experiences. From there I
discuss with other people to find out similar or contrary stories. This creates
the necessity and importance of conversation in my work. I use basic forms of
communication that are integral parts of my sculpture to develop interpersonal
relationships. Within the work, a central structure functions as a platform of
interaction between the participants. This allows me to introduce the element of
a barrier, accentuating nonverbal and/or verbal communication. I believe that
creating a barrier—whether it is an actual wall or an implied limitation¬––composes
an environment of contemplation by delineating a particular sense and allowing
participants to share information in new creative forms.
Through my sculptures, the participants connect and gather stories, transforming
them into a socially experimental experience. Influenced by Joseph Beuys
concept of social sculpture, I reform static objects into interactions by which
participants generate the work. Jacques Rancière states in The Problems and
Transformation in Critical Art, “Art no longer wants to respond to the excess of
commodities and signs, but to lack of connections.” In sharing Rancière’s idea,
I seek to create unusual circumstances for cultural exchange and sites of meta-
communication. The awkward situations that the participants face in the work,
create a vulnerability that connects them to each other––perhaps it is only through
this awkwardness that we find ways to assimilate.