장인실 개인전
April 24 – 28, 2019
2019년 4월 24-28일
Gallery M, CICA Museum
I’m Not Talking to God, I’m Talking to You.
By revealing our unique interiorities, I believe that through my practice I’m beginning a conversation that encourages the actualization of minorities. In my work, I embrace vulnerability and communicate the experience of self to address the fragmenting nature of race, gender, and cultural norms. I’m interested in the lack of education provided in the US regarding the history of Asian American immigration and it’s significance to society today. We’re not born Asian American, but rather gave birth to ourselves as Asian Americans as a political identity to be seen and heard. I don’t want to be burdened by race but I hope to create a matrix where a forgotten history has the capability to bring nostalgia and awareness, knowing that many are longing for a past that to many is fully lost. I source images from historical and personal archives to bring important yet overlooked pieces of Asian American history into the modern world. I, a Korean-American woman, represent an under recognized margin of people–and a misunderstood strata of women. As such, I use my existence to comment on certain realities: that the Asian figure (specifically, the female Asian figure) is not regarded as other forms are; that Asian figures are distinct from Western neoclassical ones. I’ve never found place of familiarity in art history or in any 19th century area of any institution but now I feel I’ve found a way to co-opt classical language to subvert it in a way that gives me a feeling of agency. My commentary comes in multimedia form, be it through printmaking, painting, research, and is dually inspired by submissiveness ingrained through cultural upbringing. Regardless of the medium, I allow my meticulous, measured approach to suggest how we might address racial differences and cultural clashes.
Insil Jang is a Brooklyn-based artist. She received her BFA in painting and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Focusing on the complexity of Asian American identity, her works reflect on the past and the present. Jang works with photography sourced from both personal and historic government archives, silk-screening the imagery onto gleaming mirrored surfaces that give viewers a look at themselves, as well as the faces of those who history often forgets. Through vivid and interactive use of material, Jang critiques the disconnect and lack of popular Asian figures within American culture.
Insil Jang “We Never Belonged to You”