There is a complex beauty in the Korean grocery stores that dot the Pacific Northwest - a space of condensed and commingled diasporic nostalgia you can see, hear, smell, and taste. I grew up in these chimeric spaces, feeling at home among the humming seafood aquariums and rows of products in multiple languages, amused by the occasional bewildered white person I’d encounter. In my sculptural installations I transpose these aesthetics, and the inextricable social implications attached, into the gallery. I use materials such as kimchi, chili pepper flakes, live geoduck clams, palm sugar, imported fruits, and Korean skincare items along with materials sourced from my body and home, such as hair and memory foam from my mattress, to create work that provokes the viewer into confronting their internal definition of what is abject, what is Asian, and what is queer. I am interested in places where abjection and queerness intersect with the racialized Asian body - from the grocery store to OnlyFans.com; from the individual to the collective imagination.
