TAEHEE WHANG WALKING TO MY GRANDFATHER’S MOUND
AT
UNDERGROUND BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS
19 JANUARY – 19 FEBRUARY 2019
AT
UNDERGROUND BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS
19 JANUARY – 19 FEBRUARY 2019
Walking to my grandfather's mound from Taehee Whang on Vimeo.
The American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings is thrilled to present Walking to my grandfather's mound, a video projection and solo exhibition by artist Taehee Whang. The exhibition will be housed in AITF’s basement gallery, The Underground Bureau of Investigations (UBOI).
/////////////////////////////////
because I was chewing soft chrysanthemums.
Bitter white juice stained my grief.
Maybe that’s the reason why you always come back to me
whenever bitterness welts on my eyes.
I’m not your eldest son,
how do I access your archive?
I’m not your daughter,
how do I sound my loss?
And the day when I join you,
I wonder what my mound would be like.
Walking to my grandfather’s mound is a visual narrative project based on Whang’s visit to their grandfather’s grave site located in a South Korean village conducted solely via Google Maps. The project examines Whang’s relationship with patriarchal family traditions, Korean womanhood, and grief as a non-binary Korean American. Culled from the online archive of computer screenshots, memes, and mom’s emoji messages, Whang’s visual work represents an exploration of internal feelings and psyche that addresses issues of gender, family narrative, and a thoughtful re-calculation of tradition.
/////////////////////////////////
Taehee Whang is a Korean American interdisciplinary artist who works in drawing, printmaking, and digital media. They completed their BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Whang is interested in how family, heritage, and personhood are archived through rituals and how they are manifested in the age of rapid cultural exchanges between homeland and diaspora through modern technology. Recent features of their work include Walking to my grandfather’s mound at the American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings (Tucson: 2018), New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 (New York: 2018), and Spring/Break Art Show: Our Great Leader Will Nuke You (New York: 2018).