Korean American Artist Collective presents BULLPEN, a group show opens this weekend at Tryst Alternative Art Fair
August 24 - 25 2024
12-6 PM PST
via the Korean American Artist Collective:
Current programming within the mainstream art world suggests the opposite of my experience: curating a group of artists belonging to the same ethnicity is intricate and perplexing, rife with problematic landmines. Yet in 2024 alone, Los Angeles has seen four group exhibitions from major art institutions utilizing race and identity as an organizing methodology. This approach to curation—an implicit discussion of value within the realms of representation—raises complex questions around identity and the politics of representation. And, as a Korean American artist myself, I am confronted by my own lens with every curatorial decision that I make. As Adrian Piper wrote, "I may not look clearly with my own eyes, but I try to see my own eyes clearly."
Each decision leads me down a rabbit hole of questioning: what kind of representation acknowledges the vastness of identity? More specifically, what does a nuanced representation of “Koreanness” look like? Consequently, when does representation become irresponsible?
Curating a show on the basis of identity requires an understanding of what it is—and to define it, is to confine it. Here we come across the first landmine (representation is a dangerous business so it’s useful to have a trusty, mine-sniffing rat by your side). When you are born othered, you have no choice but to define yourself with, or against, the language of the oppressor. This begs the question: who, exactly, is this taxonomy for?
Additionally the existence of identity-based group shows suggests a saccharine homogeneity within communities. The word, reductive, comes to mind. I resent these trappings, and the anxieties of which are symptomatic of scarcity mindset. The pressure to “get it right”, the responsibility of representation, lays twice as heavy on the marginalized.
Looking towards feminist and queer strategies, perhaps the beginning of an intervention looks like shifting our language around identity: choosing to craft long-winded, wandering definitions that ebb and flow, expand and contract, rather than restrict.
Koreanness is a verb. It’s fickle—if you imagine the Korean diaspora as an object in empty space, from one angle it can look approachable and sweet. Nonthreatening. Take a few more steps, and just as quickly as you breathe in, that same pleasantness transforms into explosive anger. It surprises you, this violent shift, so you hesitate to get closer. You move with caution. A different viewpoint suggests an object that is riddled with generational trauma. Impenetrable. Wearing golf clothes, hands clasped behind a slightly curved back. It’s contradictory: a knife with a fuzzy, light pink handle, hanji origami made of clay. It’s secretive: Korean skincare as soft power, K-pop as K-MK Ultra. It’s stubborn: like a herd of bulls.
BULLPEN is a group show made up of Korean American artists who expand upon the definitions of “Koreanness”, by their very existence. Each artist employs a deeply explorative practice while standing firm in their identities—of which cannot be defined in a sentence. If Koreanness is a verb, the thing that binds Korean Americans is the action of.
The title BULLPEN can be defined in two ways: medical professionals refer to nurses stations as fishbowls or bullpens, which serves as a direct acknowledgement of the re-use of this former-hospital-turned-art-fair. It also connotes a space where ideas, energy, spirit, are contained momentarily. Like a pause. A kind of waiting room where physical manifestations of conceptual and material explorations converge momentarily—a brief respite before embarking on their long, and separate journeys.
Artist: Eunsoo Jeong, Mary Laube, Michelle S. Cho, Jeffrey Yoo Warren, Dave Young Kim, Cha, Yuree, Julie Yeo, Dana Weiser, Yunhee Min, SooMi Han, j. eunsun, Victoria Jang, SoYoung Shin, Jeffery Sun Young Park
