Textures of Enfleshment (a silent viewer), 2023
Brown sugar-encrusted hand-painted wallpaper panels, acrylic, porcelain, candied brown sugar// 8'x16'. Photos taken by Christopher Wormald.
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.
Untitled (self-portrait), 2023
Glazed porcelain. 7”'x4”x2." Photos taken by Christopher Wormald.
Untitled (self-portrait) is a porcelain replica of my face adorned with roses and blue glaze. The sculpture is hung at face height, serving as a mirror for the viewer. The whiteness of the porcelain fades into the wall, and the blue glaze oozes as if to escape. The raised roses become adornment and nodule, transforming into a monstrous beauty and surrealist depiction of one becoming chinoiserie.
The various self-portraits urge the viewer to attend to their assumptions as to which self-portrait is more “real” and which one is more monstrous.