Artworks

Inexhaustible Abundance

Se Young Au, visual artist and writer Medium: mixed media: digital collage on Habatoi silk, porcelain, scented elements Size: N/A Year it was made: 2022

Au was born in Seoul, Korea in 1984 and is part of a body of an estimated 200,000 (+) children relinquished from the country between the end of the war until the mid 2000’s.

This piece was conceived as an offering to all of the young children who did not have agency in their leaving of Korea- for the children who were raised worlds away from their homeland and birth culture. And most pertinently, to confront Korea and US imperialist forces actions rooted in violence which resulted in the commodification of their bodies and created a global industrial adoption complex. This system displaced a faction of multi-generations through forced migration and secured the country’s status as a global economic power decades after the war was over.

Born in the USA, digital image

David Noel, artist Born in the USA, 2022 Medium - Graphite on Stonehenge paper Size - 9” x 11.25” (11” x 14” frame)

As a Korean adoptee who grew up in Appalachia, navigating identity has always been a solitary endeavor full of contradictions—one I’ve been reluctant to share or articulate. Any sense of racial melancholia (as described by Eng and Han) has been neutralized…drawn out like an impurity. My experience is one of assimilation…sublimation, understood as both radically utopian and problematic. This work is about language, identity, determinism, permanence…what it means to be. It’s about not looking back.

Case Number : 82-593/KYG

Kayla Tange, artist Case Number : 82-593/KYG, wood, plexiglass, LED, LCD screens, plastic, acrylic paint, 2024, 22”x19”x4.¼”

“Case Number : 82-593/KYG,” 2024, is a video sculpture made of wood, acrylic, LED, laparoscopic surgery images, diagnosis notes, adoption documents in Korean and English, performance footage, and childhood clips. It examines longing, adoption, sex work, and what we deem taboo. It navigates the complexities of lineage, loss, and bodily autonomy, reflecting on my mother’s early death, the genetic unknowns of breast cancer and endometriosis, and the experience of reclaiming my body after it crumbled. It is part of the Bought and Sold series.