NADA Miami 2023

Textures of Enfleshment (a silent viewer) reimagines the traditional blue and white chinoiserie pattern, creating an origin story that replaces the iconic blue/white tradition with blue and brown. The brown is created by encrusting brown sugar on the surface of the hand-painted panels. The wallpaper uses archived family photos to tell part of my family’s migration story — a forced migration due to US military occupation in Korea. The repeated imagery reimagines Chinoiserie to take back agency. Instead of having an outside perspective, I write my own story. Each image is drawn allowing hyper-personal imagery to become a multiple through slight variation – embodying many different people and stories simultaneously through temporalities and our desires to connect to a home place. Yet, this storytelling is constantly confronted by an overwhelming scent of brown sugar, a persistent reminder of slavery’s afterlife.