Because I am not exceptional, I have faced many barriers. In a world where individuals are flooded with roadblocks, not limited to just physical hurdles but also intangible barriers spanning gender, language, religion, class, and culture, it is difficult to imagine that one can escape from such precarity in the long-term. Growing up in a divided South Korea, a country still reconciling its war-time past, the fear of a third war haunts the public’s imaginary. Meanwhile, social barriers have left low-income artist like myself vulnerable in a highly structured, hierarchal social system. While I believe that the change of setting ought to offer me an opportunity to escape the same roadblocks that had challenged me as an artist in Korea, I have come to discover that barriers are situated everywhere. This recognition, as well as my desire to dismantle these barriers, has fueled my work in multimedia interactive art, which uses the public domain as a vehicle to change how individuals and groups communicate across barriers. In my artistic practice, I often ask myself the question, “How can we understand each other truthfully even beyond communication barriers?” By providing a medium through which individuals can partake in a mutually playful experience, I aspire to create the necessary conditions where interpersonal communication can be augmented and where people can interact and build mutual trust despite the obstacles and barriers along the way. I adopt various scales of form to realize my idea, such as rituals, cultural prostheses.
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