Entangled Biosecurity

Entangled Biosecurity is a multispecies ethnography of Wanggung, Iksan City, South Korea. In Wanggung, where people affected by leprosy were quarantined and encouraged into state-sanctioned pig farming, multiple ontological enactments of human and animal bodies, diseases, and waste arise. By examining different modes of biosecurity measures taken for leprosy, COVID-19, and foot and mouth disease, this presentation examines the way in which care and control coexist within the territorial containers designed for disease and waste control.

American Anthropological Association
2024 Annual Conference: Praxis

11/20/2024 - 11/24/2024

Recylced Places

Recycled Places delves into the making of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), a small community museum that chronicles the rich history of community resilience of the Lower East Side Manhattan. Following the economic stagnation in the 1970s, many buildings that were seized by the city for nonpayment of taxes were left vacant. Squatters reclaimed these tenements, and after multiple attempts of forced eviction and resistance, the city offered to legalize the occupation. Squatters of C-Squat collectively decided to rent out the first-floor storefront, which now houses MoRUS. While transforming the squat into a museum, certain parts such as walls with murals were preserved, while other elements were thoughtfully recycled and repurposed. Through a broad contour of the making of MoRUS from C-Squat, this study aims to suggest a more holistic approach to sustainable urban heritage conservation.

International Council of Museums
ICAMT 50th Annual Conference

10/6/2024 - 10/10/2024

Facing the Mannequin

Facing the Mannequin dives into the unique backstories behind the mannequins still used in the Hall of Asian Peoples, which opened in 1980 at the American Museum of Natural History. How effectively do the mannequins in the Hall of Asian Peoples represent their respective cultures? Historically, ethnographic museums have used mannequins to teach their visitors about cultures from around the world. But today most museums find other ways to do this same work. Many think that mannequins cannot represent an entire race, culture or group of people; others are concerned that mannequins freeze cultures in time.

Gardner D. Stout Hall of Asian Peoples
The American Museum of Natural History
200 Central Park West, New York, NY

05/09/2023 - Ongoing

Museum

Museum experiments with the potential of virtual spaces to shift how we sense and perceive museum walls and the institutional devide between subject and object. The video starts with footage of a software bug where the viewer is stuck “inside” a wall of a virtual museum. As the sense of being stuck becomes reality, museum walls become deconstructed. However, Museum calls attention to the walls again through footage of zoos, where the camera is focused on the violent containment infrastructures such as glass, iron bars, and fences, not the animals exhibited behind. 

Two-channel video installation, 10’5”
Art & Technology Conference 2021
«Quantum Jump: Leap into the future»

12/01/21 - 12/03/21

The Royal Palace

The Royal Palace is an ethnographic fiction and photo essay about Wanggung, a leprosy settlement village where those affected by leprosy farmed pigs as a state-project of survival. The name Wanggung means “royal palace,” a reference to the ruins of an ancient palace site located in the area. On the highway leading to the site, the ethnographer notices the pervasive stench of hog excrement but pays it little mind. Standing among the ruins, she realizes that the stench has followed her, lingering even in the grandeur of the palace. Guided by the stench, the ethnographer documents Wanggung’s network of humans, pigs, viruses, local stakeholders, reservoirs, rivers, and tidal flats. Through a series of photographs and writing, she traces the entanglements of these actors, revealing a complex ecology where survival, contamination, and history converge.

Art & Technology Conference 2020
«AND»

12/15/2020 - 1/15/2021