Translated press release
written by Moon, So Young (SARUBIA curator)
Language may let some things slip and those that can’t be named are more vivid and felt so close to the skin. What artists do is to gather what language let slide and stubbornly grant them forms. And in this process, their practice becomes their language and identity. It is the creative act of confrontation and exploration into the very origin of the practice artists construct for themselves that allows persistent transformation into new forms. Detached yet maintaining the transparent identity, artists may pursue a fluid mode of existence. As such, Choey Eun Young Cho’s work chooses ambiguity over clarity and buoyancy to settlement. Her practice resists binary concepts but invests in the variables, striving to unfold the very dividing elements of boundaries whether it be about body and language, one language to another, or the overdetermined notion of “I” that traverse between worlds much like identities that transform in different contexts. In her exhibition I Ordered a New Body and It Never Came, Cho seeks to translate elusive, living sensations and embodied memories through the installation of sculpture, audio documentaries, and paintings.
The ’Body’ in the title not only refers to one’s physical body or a standalone part, but signify communal beliefs or collective entities. ‘It Never Came’can mean something physically not arriving yet it can also be defined as a certain event or anticipated moment failed to materialize. The title, “I ordered a new body, but it never came,” can be read literally as a puzzling translation and a metaphor for identity as abstract idea, perpetually intangible and elusive. Language inevitably conceals a sensory difference rooted in experience, and this discrepancy distorts translation. And for Cho, this instinctual, embodied experience devoid of form, the unmediated impression left untranslated in the process of moving from one language to another, is where she searches for the possibility of the form before it is shaped by language. She intentionally detaches sentence from context or utilizes unpredicted mistranslation as metaphors. Her experiments do not create concrete imagery, but she embraces organic approach to translation that reveals traces of sensations that constantly vibrate and transform. She expands the narrative and its space by blurring the boundaries between languages and evokes new sensations working through ambiguity rather than clarity. Concrete hardens upon contact with water, but it is non elastic material vulnerable to tensile stress that causes fracture. Language too may seem solid, but there are constant tensions and fissures.
The eight audio vignettes played in the project space SARUBIA refrains from specifying narrators and aims to expand into stories that anyone can inhabit. The audio documentaries stem from years of collecting stories of artist’s grandmothers from Korea and the US. Cho disassembles their narratives in a way that obscures the sequence and assembles them again as she weaves her own narratives into it. She notes, “I don’t see the whole as bigger and part smaller but the sum of all these parts as larger than the whole.” She unfolds every story without hierarchy, treating each narrative in equal measure through reading that feels deliberate yet awkward, akin to pressing down on paper with clumsyhandwriting. The narratives span across the lived experiences of two grandmothers raised in different environments, languages and cultures - patriarchal environments, the experiences of being a woman, losing families amid turbulent histories, the Imjin River, memories on a farm in Hastings, Nebraska, anecdotes about regional dialects, milking cows, and the origins of one’s name. Through the artist’s voice, the stories are passed down in a future tense, seamlessly woven together without regard for the protagonists’ identities. Listeners are invited to immerse themselves in the interplay of the echoes and traces, shaping their own context as new protagonists.
Speech is an utterance of the body, relatively instintual, with the ability to convey subtle sensations that elude written words. The artist does not provide transcript (text) for the audio. Amid fleeting words and contexts left open for reinterpretation, she anticipates that what is heard may resonate with the listener, allowing the utterance to evolve into something new through their experience. The eight audio documentaries continuously drift away from context and blur the beginning and end of the stories while keeping the narrators concealed. The narratives of the two grandmothers come together through the artist as conduit, intertwining the stories of three women into deeply personal tales that simultaneously uncover universally relatable currents of human experience. Events from the past resurface through records and oral storytelling while indirectly experienced pasts seep into the formless future, dissolving the tenses and boundaries that divide ‘you’ and ‘I.’ All time converges, conneccting past, present, and future.
Cho focuses on organic and instinctual senses to extricate the subtle, untranslatable sensations. She distances herself from culturally or socially imposed systems and roles, denying reliance on externally assigned identities to concentrate on more unconditioned, lived experiences. This approach aligns with Hélène Cixous’s concept of écriture féminine(feminine writing). Cixous’s concept of feminine writing transcends conservative language structures and binary thinking, not by dividing sacred domains but by allowing the body’s sensations and nonverbal expriences to permeate the act of writing. Cho’s artistic stance of retrieving veiled emotions and experiences beneath the surface of language, by blurring the structure and context, resonates with the practice of feminine writing. For instance, Cho’s paintings placed throughout the gallery alongside the vignettes concentrate on the experiential aspects of language. Drawing upon the dissonance felt in the body, akin to shifts in intonation or pitch in speech, she juxtaposes words that seem incongruous yet are connected in a liminal space. Through this act of painting, she unveils sensory perceptions shaped and informed by the body.
In Cho’s work, narratives are neither listed nor divided; instead they embrace and intertwine, forming an organic, dynamic structure. Her approach folds in on itself, revealing the intricate process of narratives interweaving and layering, transcending mere substitution on the surface of the stories. Like the seams of a pocket seen only when turned inside out, the meanings in Cho’s work may not be immediately apparent but are intuitively connected. Her translations embrace the fludity of interpretation, anticipating that each iteration will uncover new elements and stories. This method of translation prioritizes capturing the sensations, emotions, and instictive experiences that dwell between languages rather than adhering to fixed meanings. Cho’s work expands beyond the traditional act of connecting two languages, evolving into a process where language and narrative continusouly fold and unfold, generating new meanings. Retrieving orally transmitted pasts, even those indirectly experienced, is intrinsically connected to anticipating the future. As Cixous suggests, beginnings and endings coexist within the seamless continuity of life. We encounter countless experiences, often feeling joy or sadness for events we have not personally lived through, sometimes without even realizing it. Translation, with its inherent misalignments, holds the power to expand stories. Within the stream of narratives flowing through the exhibition, visitors are invited to pause, translate the spoken stories into their own language, and carry them in theirr hearts. In this way, the stories are not confined but endure, resonating and continuing to unfold over time.