Futile Adaptations: 밑 빠진 독에 물 붓기
This was an exhibition focused on the efforts towards acculturation while living as a foreigner in Korea. It aimed to tell both the artist’s own story while illustrating some shared elements of cultural adaptation. In particular, the interweaving of lived, real memories/snapshots with scenes from korean dramas in the three charcoal drawings symbolized the potential for hazy boundaries.
This part of the installation aimed to evoke the bedroom of a foreigner in Korea, with black tape outlining the room. Sketches, notes, letters, maps, snapshots, and Korean language homework surround the desk, on which rest the edible “drama supplements”—the dismantled remnants of the charcoal drawings.
At the opposite end of the installation, three videos played timelapses of the drawing and dismantling of the three charcoal drawings.
In each charcoal composition, scenes from three different Korean TV dramas were combined with real memories from life in Korea. The physical drawings were then dismantled and turned into ostensibly edible pieces—pills, a powder, and flakes to be brewed like tea—suggesting these dramas be ingested as a way to acculturate.
These videos toy with the experience of immediacy/hypermediacy and realism/reality.