My work investigates cross-cultural sites of exchange and how identity is formed in a foreign culture. I have spent a majority of my life, well over 20 years, as an expatriate here in Korea. This timeframe spent in any location would usually meet the standards to claim oneself as a ‘local’, however I believe I do not fully own that right. As the Korean word for expats denotes, I am an ‘outside person’. This status cannot change, however Korea as a place is wrapped into a large part of my identity. It is from this position I create.

In this presentation I will recall my own experience of forming my own identity through living between two cultures. I will examine characteristics of contemporary displacement as it relates to finding a sense of place, and I will share my own work, as it provides visual commentary on ways others negotiate and address these particular of issues of displacement.

The majority of my work is borrows Korean folk elements, forms, language, and modern objects and incorporates them with western aesthetics. I am interested representing the coexistence of places and histories and making these connections visible and experienced. There is No Wilderness explores ways one negotiates space in a continually altered, multi-cultural, multi-local landscape. Creating an immersive installation using construction apparatus allows me to continue to explore themes of transience and bring out multiple readings of place as part of a larger consideration of our ability to locate ourselves. I examine the views of our multiple senses of place through critical lenses of Lucy Lippard and Mi Won Kwon, and weave the concepts of supermodernity of anthropologist Marc Augé.

My attempts at finding a sense of place and sharing in that journey becomes a platform to relate with my audience. Formally borrowing from folk art and culture, using the urban landscape as subject matter, and implying person in the work can perhaps make this possible.