top of page
MESSAGES FROM MY ANCESTORS TO OUR COLONIZERS (The Gaze is Not Our Own)
2017
Created during the 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship
At the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, I was looking through early photographs taken in Korea in the early 1900s. Much of the photographs depicted Koreans as workers, carrying large items on their backs and heads, and as heathens (notes with the words heathen and devil even present on the backs of the photographs). Early photographs of Korea were either taken by American Christian Missionaries or Japanese photographers as Japan was colonizing Korea. In a state of anger, this is my response to these photographs. These are the messages from my ancestors to our colonizers.
bottom of page