A conversation with a wave, video projection on quilted bojagi fabric
I started researching women's conditions in S. Korea during the residency at ACC when I got to know about the situation of women in multicultural marriages in S. Korea. I visited the multi-cultural marriage center in Gwangju neighborhood. The international marriages accounted for 8.3 percent of the total marriages in 2017. The greater part of international marriages is being made between the brides from Southeast Asia or China and the bachelors in rural farming communities. This phenomenon is largely due to Korean women’s unwillingness to marry rural farming bachelors. Meanwhile, international marriages produce not a few problems in rural farming communities, which are not ready to take in the racial mixture. Many immigrant brides and their children are suffering from racial discrimination and are confronting with economic, cultural, educational, and linguistic difficulties.
The video installation ‘A conversation with a wave’ explores One’s emotional journey and discourse around the mapping of the travel/migration and interweaving of cultures. The video built a meta-narrative as a conversation of a woman with a wave mapping the imprints of cultural integration through time and places. Here, I worked with a traditional Seungmu dancer to explore the emotional variations during a conversation with a stranger. The sudden appearance and the long journey of a wave resonate as a metaphor to the migratory situation of the international brides in Korea. The projection on layers of semitransparent delicate fabrics is used to depict one’s emotional fragility in the transitory phase.