{"id":4729,"date":"2022-02-28T23:29:10","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T23:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4729"},"modified":"2022-03-31T22:45:02","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:45:02","slug":"water-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/28\/water-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Water Memory<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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This essay has been adapted from an artist talk delivered by the author on September 16, 2021, at the Trustman Art Gallery in Boston.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Soyoung L. Kim<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The pandemic has changed many things for us. For some of us, we have been thrust from being invisible in this nation to being suddenly visible. Our country\u2019s systemic racism and economic inequalities have been exposed. We have lost loved ones to COVID. The U.S. has pulled out of Afghanistan. These are monumental upheavals.<\/p>

But in the midst of all the turmoil among us humans, the earth has also been in distress. Just as we are carrying around heaviness, the earth around us is mirroring our own emotional disturbance by burning up or flooding or swirling in hurricanes. We have had fires on our west coast. We have had hurricanes and floods in the north east. There are floods all over the world: Germany, Vietnam, Venezuela. The earth is heaving.<\/p>

With this as our backdrop, let\u2019s turn to Toni Morrison\u2019s words from her essay, \u201cThe Site Of Memory,\u201d where she writes about writing and about memory:<\/p>

Because no matter how \u201cfictional\u201d the account of these writers, or how much it was a product of invention, the act of imagination is bound up with memory. You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. \u2018Floods\u2019 is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory\u2014what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our \u201cflooding.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>

71% of earth is covered in water; 60\u201370% of the human body is water. Earth, the human body\u2014the two are closely connected. This connection is what I explore in my visual art. By studying one, the earth and her landscape, I\u2019m exploring the other, the human condition.<\/p>

I still remember my watercolor painting classes with Elizabeth Ockwell at SAIC. I had long been enamored with J.M.W. Turner\u2019s minimal watercolor sketches and wanted to figure out this medium. I was quickly challenged by watercolor\u2019s ability to resist control. I remember one exercise in particular that my instructor gave us: to cover the paper with a wash of paint that was smooth and uniform, without leaving a single trace of brush mark or variation in saturation. If you\u2019ve ever painted with watercolor, you know how difficult this is. What that class taught me was a respect for the watercolor medium. It also taught me how to use paint as a liquid, not as an extension of a drawing tool. I learned to find freedom in surrendering my control, in allowing the paint to move and spread across the paper as it desired. I learned to let the medium guide me just as much as I tried to shape it.<\/p>

These lessons I learned through watercolor, I translate into acrylic paints, thin washes as well as thick coats of paint. These are used to create layers, to create depth, in my work. Like the marks water leaves behind, my paints leave their marks. Like the coming in and out of the waves on the beach and how they leave behind traces of a moment on the sand, my paints speak of shadows and ghosts from my life.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Chasing Clouds by Soyoung L. Kim. Image used with permission from the artist. Photo by Will Howcroft.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This painting became a fusion of my emotional memories of Thailand and of a market in Nairobi.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This particular painting was inspired by a trip to Thailand. The colors of fruits, baskets, fabrics that surrounded me in the markets of Thailand transported me back to my childhood memories of visits to Kenyan markets.<\/p>

I remember our trips to the markets in Nairobi, always being overwhelmed by the smells and the colors. I remember the dust, the flies, the smells, but mostly, I remember the colors. Not just the colors of the fruits in their baskets, but also the brightly colored and patterned kikois that hung in the stalls, providing shade, as well as the kikois wrapped around women\u2019s bodies and their heads.<\/p>

This painting became a fusion of my emotional memories of Thailand and of a market in Nairobi. \u201cA rush of imagination is our flooding.\u201d The flooding took me to Thailand, to Nairobi, and back here.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Reading Between the Lines by Soyoung L. Kim. Image used with permission from the artist. Photo by Will Howcroft.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I see water as a metaphor for my own emotions, just as the earth is a metaphor for our human bodies.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This is a painting on raw canvas. Different surfaces present new opportunities for me to create layers and textures. I love to watch veins spreading on the surface. They remind me of aerial shots of landscapes. I feel like I can see the process of water movement in nature.<\/p>

Forces like wind and ocean currents are invisible to the human eye, but they leave their marks on the landscape. Their handiwork is also stretched out over a vast length of time. We, with our human eyes, can only glimpse a moment of this eternal process. In places that were once submerged underwater we see the marks left on the rocks and the land as the water slowly evaporated\u2013shadows of a different past.\u00a0<\/p>

My paintings are my attempts to capture those marks because I see water as a metaphor for my own emotions, just as the earth is a metaphor for our human bodies. Our emotions shape our worlds and leave behind traces of our lives, reminding us that our lives do matter.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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MOULTING No.4 + 5: Hagar + Sarai\/Sarah by Soyoung L. Kim. Image used with permission from the artist. Photo by Will Howcroft.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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In abstraction, I am free from the restraints of location and subject matter. I can exist solely in the world of color, infusing it with my own memories, but leaving it open to interpretations.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I began the MOULTING series back in April 2021. It\u2019s a series that I share on Substack. The series is a twelve-month-long experiment. Ever since my graduate school days, I have been thinking about my writing and my art making and trying to find a place where those two processes can come together, and not in the sense of my art being illustrations to my writing. I wanted the processes to be more closely fused together. They have certainly always inspired each other\u2014I write about artworks I\u2019ve created or art I wish to create, I create art inspired by something I\u2019ve written\u2014but they were always distinct from each other. Was it possible to blur the lines? Was it possible for my artistic practice to exist in a place where one medium didn\u2019t dominate the other, where the two could exist equally valid, where the two couldn\u2019t exist fully without the other?\u00a0This blurring of the lines between mediums is important to me and pushes me to keep exploring through my work.<\/p>

My parents were born in a Korea that was still under the colonial rule of Japan. My father often talks about how he was taught only Japanese in school. To this day, he knows Japanese but refuses to speak it, an act of defiance even as he approaches the age of ninety years. After WWII, Japan left Korea, and after a short period of time, the country was thrown into the Korean War. My father fought in that war as a sixteen-year-old young man. The 38th parallel was drawn, forever dividing a country, forever separating families. The Korean War has never officially ended. American troops still occupy South Korea in the DMZ, the DeMilitarized Zone. Korea\u2019s recent past is fraught with the fight against colonialism and erasure, the fight against dictators, and the fight for democracy. There is a certain fragility to our existence.<\/p>

I knew nothing of this as a child born in Seoul. But I caught glimpses of it in the stories my parents told me and cobbled together a past for myself.<\/p>

The poet Don Mee Choi in her book DMZ Colony<\/em> writes about her father who was a photojournalist in South Korea after the Korean War. The \u201cinfamous day\u201d she refers to is the day Park Jung Hee took over the South Korean government after a successful military coup. She writes:<\/p>

Because I was an infant, I have no memory of this infamous day except through my father\u2019s memory. Memory\u2019s memory. Memory\u2019s child. My memory lives inside my father\u2019s camera, the site where my memory was born, where my retina and my father\u2019s overlap. . . . Overlapping memory always longs for return, the return of memory.<\/p><\/blockquote>

I relate so much to this, the idea of memory giving birth to memory. It is a fragile connection. Such is my own fragile connection to the land where I was born.<\/p>

When I was six years old, my parents, with their hearts on fire for Jesus, left Seoul and moved to Nairobi, Kenya, as missionaries. That move changed my life forever. What roots I may have set down in South Korea were severed, and I was transplanted in a land far from my birth place. The location on the equator made the very air I breathed feel different. The sun felt stronger there. The sky felt so close because the clouds always looked heavy enough to descend to my level. The change in landscape and environment felt so visceral, my body reacted by getting quite sick.<\/p>

My parents sent me to a British school where I was immersed in the English language and the writings of British authors. This was yet another displacement, to be educated into a British perspective and history while living in Kenya.<\/p>

This time in my life was the beginning of hearing certain words used by others to describe me. Words that supposedly summed me up. Words that felt restrictive, confining, othering. In Nairobi, I was forever mzungu<\/em>. In Korea, I was gyopo<\/em>. In America, I am immigrant, minority<\/em>. I have been called many other names, too, some derogatory. These are different languages, different contexts, but they all share the same qualities. These words don\u2019t communicate anything about the journey I have been on. They don\u2019t communicate whether I had a say in the matter of my status. They simply convey my status of perceived unbelonging.<\/p>

In order to survive, I had to create a world where I belonged. I escaped through reading and drawing. The images in my head and the stories I dreamt up were places where I belonged, where the demands of different races, cultures, traditions, languages had equal weight, instead of one being more important than another.<\/p>

And so I have gravitated to abstraction. In abstraction, I am free from the restraints of location and subject matter. I can exist solely in the world of color, infusing it with my own memories, but leaving it open to interpretations.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Life Forms, No. 1\u201310 by Soyoung L. Kim. Image used with permission from the artist.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 is the process of hardening as the water evaporates, leaving behind a structure that\u2019s strong and dry.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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While my work explores instances of flooding\u2013water in its abundance\u2013it also explores those moments of scarcity, when there is no water where there should be water.<\/p>

The process of papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 involves gluing paper pulp together with a paste made from flour and water. It\u2019s the process of hardening as the water evaporates, leaving behind a structure that\u2019s strong and dry.<\/p>

These pieces reference life forms that live both underwater and in deserts. I think about prickly unassuming plants growing in the desert. I think about corals and other life forms in the ocean. I think about fossils.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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100 Cups of Tea by Soyoung L. Kim. Image used with permission from the artist. Photo by Jen Lucas.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Creativity resides anywhere and everywhere. Beauty can be found in trash. We just have to be willing to see.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I made these out of the pages of my novel that I\u2019d written but couldn\u2019t publish. Rejected words. Rather than throwing them out, I transformed my rejected words into teacups, perhaps to hold my sorrows, but more to liberate my words and transform my disappointment into something that gave me comfort. When I was young in Nairobi, I lived for a time with family friends whose mother was originally from Germany. While living with them, I discovered the beautiful ritual of afternoon teatime. Every day, after school, we\u2019d sit down for a cup of chai and cake. That ritual kept me grounded in an uncertain time when our family was facing serious health concerns for my mother.<\/p>

Taking rejected materials and transforming them into something new has been the drive behind my sculptural work. I remember watching children in Nairobi digging through piles of garbage, searching for cans to flatten out and build into cars, searching for plastic bags and twine to roll up into balls. Perhaps because I was too young to judge, I saw them doing exactly what I would be doing\u2014looking for treasure. What I as an adult might only see as poverty and destitution, my younger self saw as a mound of possibilities, just like the children who lived there. I\u2019m not trying to color this situation with rosy hues. Far from it, but what I am saying is that creativity resides anywhere and everywhere. Beauty can be found in trash. We just have to be willing to see.<\/p>

Several years ago, I was in Baja California Sur, Mexico, on a hike through the desert. Our guide pointed out a short, gnarly, unattractive tree. It was an olive tree, native to that region. I barely glanced at it and was about to move on when he said the tree roots crack through rocks to get to water. My ears perked up. How could this be? I took a closer look at the tree. An ugly tree that I might have walked by without noticing was now transformed by my guide\u2019s words. All I saw was its strength and beauty now where I once saw a common tree.<\/p>

My papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 sculptures look very fragile. At the same time, if they rip, they are easily fixed. I use very humble and easily accessible materials. Pages from the rejected manuscripts of my novel, plastic netting from my recycling bin, paste made with flour and water. My papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 sculptures are fragile, but they are also resilient. Resilient like the olive tree of the desert, like the children in the slums of Nairobi, like my ancestors, like me.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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MOULTING No.2: Women Who Become Trees by Soyoung L. Kim. Image used with permission from the artist.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Here I stand today, having lived over half my life in America, with ghost roots stretching back to Korea and Kenya, but also stretching out new roots, establishing actual roots here. It is here that my own flooding begins, even when this home sometimes doesn\u2019t see me and chooses to erase who I am.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A couple of weeks ago, I was on the west coast and went to see the redwoods. One of the guides in the national park described how the redwoods, while they towered from two hundred to three hundred feet above us, their roots went only twelve feet below ground. A good gust of wind would surely topple them all down like dominoes. But the redwood roots, while shallow, radiate out and tangle and entwine with the roots of the trees near them. Underneath the dirt, we would find a vast network of connected roots. The trees were holding onto each other, keeping each other standing tall and strong. I couldn\u2019t help but think about my tree women in MOULTING No.2.<\/p>

I have often pictured myself as a stick, a piece of driftwood, much like the papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 stalks in my sculptures, much like one of these sticks. I was light enough for the wind to carry me from place to place, for the ocean to carry me from one continent to the next, never setting down roots, never belonging anywhere. Because belonging involves more than me claiming my roots, me claiming a people as my own. Belonging means a people claiming me as one of their own, too.<\/p>

My roots to Korea are what I have come to call ghost roots, ties to Korea created through the stories my parents told me about their lives there. My memories were birthed through the transmission of their memories. Can these memories be considered real? Authentic? I think about people who have lost limbs but still feel them. Ghost limbs. Ghost roots.<\/p>

My roots to Kenya are ghost roots, too. As a mzungu, it was hard to imagine living there for the rest of my life. There seemed this mutual understanding between the Kenyans and me that I would move on. But the land of Kenya taught me and shaped me into who I am today. So I claim ghost roots to my adopted home.<\/p>

Here I stand today, having lived over half my life in America, with ghost roots stretching back to Korea and Kenya, but also stretching out new roots, establishing actual roots here. I have begun my own family here. I now have a people who claim me as one of their own. And it is here that my own flooding begins, even when this home sometimes doesn\u2019t see me and chooses to erase who I am.<\/p>

Now, more than ever, we need each other. My sisters\u2014women of color, my allies\u2014we need to live like the redwoods, our roots entwined, standing together, giving strength to each other. We need to care for this earth. We must continue the hard work of reaching across our racial and economic barriers, across our silos. We need to take care of one another through the pandemic and through our country\u2019s racial reckoning in ways we haven\u2019t done before. May we allow for many floodings to remind us of our resilience, and may we bravely imagine new worlds that we can build together for a just future.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Soyoung L. Kim<\/strong> was born in Seoul, South Korea, but grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. She made her way to the USA for college and received her MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently practices her interdisciplinary work in Boston, Massachusetts.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay has been adapted from an artist talk delivered by the author on September 16, 2021, at the Trustman Art Gallery in 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