We Are Many 우리는 다수다 October 11 - November 15, 2021
Nicole Won Hee Maloof
Alex Myung
Meg O’Shea
Curated by
Leah Nichols
Organized by AHL Foundation
Sponsored by Overseas Koreans Foundation
Best viewed on desktop200,000 is the number of overseas Korean adopted people most frequently cited. On one hand, this number asserts the adoption of Korean children as a systemic industry rooted in family separation, reproductive injustice, and Western exceptionalism. On the other hand, this number asserts the undeniable visibility of a global community. The sheer presence of adopted Koreans around the world rejects both notions of inbetween-ness and a monolithic single story. Within this dispersed yet globular group of people, individual histories of upbringing, politics, identity expression, and citizenship or reunion status are varied. Multiplicities, contradictions, and differences are celebrated. New, repeat, and adapted stories are limitless.
This exhibit continues a legacy of adopted Koreans gathering since the 1980s. The intergenerational resistance to infantilization and the tokenizing pressure to serve as educators or ambassadors has paved the way for these three artists to reimagine play and self-expression within ideas of Koreanness. Through a visual language of color, humor, and pop culture symbology, each artist uses adoption as a means, not an end, to assert an evolving, intersectional selfhood. The connections between these artists as well as those that exist between adjacent adopted, fostered, trafficked, and displaced communities, squelch the individualist isolation myth of “being ‘the only one’” and evoke, instead, abundance.
Nicole Maloof
(she/they) Born in Korea and raised in Massachusetts, Maloof received a BFA in painting and a BA in chemistry from Boston University. After graduation, Maloof worked on organic chemistry research at Harvard University, taught in Korea for two years on a Fulbright teaching grant, and then moved to New York, where she earned her MFA in the visual arts from Columbia University. Maloof currently lives and works in New York and has been a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Sarah Lawrence College since 2018. She has shown work at the International Print Center New York, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Boston Center for the Arts, and Crush Curatorial, among others, and has been reviewed in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and Artnet.com. Nicole maintains a multidisciplinary art practice, spanning drawing, printmaking, and video. All of Nicole's artistic endeavors investigate social relations, zooming in and out from the level of personal intimacy to the larger scale of society. Nicole uses video to reveal contradictions embedded in American society and culture. Commonplace objects appear throughout Nicole's work — street signs or bananas — prompting reflection on history, capitalism, science, language, and race. Nicole use a mix of iPad footage and desktop screen captures, arranged to create a kind of fugue, wherein elements are introduced and recombined later in the piece in a way that shifts their original meaning. This form of collage and repetition serves to counter the familiar, naturalizing ways that dominant narratives often present in our culture. Nicole constructs the world anew in order to unveil the abstract mechanisms that shape our society.
What color is a banana? video (color, sound), 2017, running time 13:01
Funny Street Names (이상한 거리 이름들) video (color, sound), 2015, running time 11:54
Same/Difference, collaboration between Nicole Maloof and Yujin Lee 2-channel video (color, sound0, 2015, running time 35:42
Alex Myung
Alex Myung (he/him) is a queer animation artist who’s work explores new intersections between sexuality, and his Korean adoptee status. It is often influenced by the ten years he spent working as a technical designer in New York City for fashion houses such as Tory Burch, Diane von Furstenberg, DKNY, and Phillip Lim. His second animated short film, Arrival (2016), went on to screen in over 20 international and Oscar accredited film festivals, and has been seen by over 4 million viewers on Youtube since it debuted on the platform in 2017. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his partner and is a lead background designer for an upcoming Netflix animated series. Previous credits include Steven Universe Future, Centaurworld, MJ Rodriguez’s “Something to Say,” and the forthcoming Amy Poehler produced animated movie, Steps.
The illustrations selected are a visual depiction of personal growth, and reflection through drawings of Hanbok. They ask the viewer to define what the Hanbok silhouette means to them, and how far the shape can deviate until it is unrecognizable and something entirely new. At what point do our origins become unfamiliar to others? At what point do they begin to rebuild within our own scope of recognition. Juxtaposed, Alex's first animated short film, was made during a time when he had sought to compartmentalize the struggles of growing up as a transracial/transnational adoptee. As time has passed, and the realization that your adoptee status is unavoidably and intrinsically linked to how you navigate the world, Alex has since removed the film from public viewing in an effort to rethink the kinds of adoptee stories he wants to tell.
Little Nest (2018) An expression of ‘loss.’
Hanbok Study (2020) A rumination on how to visually define Hanbok
Homegame (2021) Part of an upcoming series of images that seeks to unpack an experience of racial aggression and dominance through queer fashion and poetry.
Juxtaposed (2009)
Meg O’Shea
Meg O’Shea (she/her) is a comic artist based in Sydney, Australia (unceded Wangal land). She creates largely autobiographical and non-fiction work as a means of both documenting and processing personal experiences and exploring issues of concern to her.
Her comics have featured on The Nib, The Lily, as part of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s digital program, and in various anthologies including Comic Sans, The Threads That Connect Us and Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment and Survival, which in 2020 won the Eisner Award for Best Anthology. She has also taught comic workshops to high school students from migrant and refugee backgrounds with STARTTS, art workshops to elementary-aged students in Korea, and is currently working on a longer-format autobiographical work. The three works were created at three stages of the birth family search undertaken by Meg during her time living in Korea from 2019 to 2021. Made as the events depicted took place, these pieces may be considered extended “diary comics” - artefacts of feelings and thoughts at certain points in time, and a means by which those points may be revisited, confirmed, and reflected upon in the future.
December 2019
October 2020
May 2021
Curator
Leah Nichols
Leah Nichols is an award-winning filmmaker and designer based in San Francisco. She is best known for the animated short film, 73 Questions (2018 San Francisco International Film Festival selection, 2018 Social Impact Media Awards winner). She served as the lead animator for the documentaries Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day For Me (2020 BBC News) and Only the Moon/Solamente La Luna (2019 Sundance Ignite winner). Her work seeks to celebrate connections across differences, expand media representations of family structures, and eliminate stigmas related to mental health.
Contact: mrawmrawSF@gmail.com
Team AHL Foundation
Sook Nyu Lee Kim
Jiyoung Lee
Amos Farooqi
