TOP: Installation View at Riviera Parking. image courtesy of Riviera Parking and the artist. 2021. Photo: Max Cleary
BOTTOM: Installation View at 1st gallery anaheim. 2021. image courtesy of the artist.
Deliberate Marking, Oblivious to Itself, But to Sing, to Sing, Very Softly, is a video inspired by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book Dictée.
Cha’s text searches through the history of bodies that are moved and unspoken through force. Chung’s piece contemplates her bodily presence in the current place and time she finds herself in as the mismatching of time, space, and body leaves her with a feeling of displacement.
This displacement comes from the dissonance between micro perceptions and macro perceptions that are experienced simultaneously.
The experience of being confined to a room or the same domestic space day after day instigates a sensitivity at a micro level as demonstrated by Chung’s lens as it zooms in and along the surface of her skin. Drawing a map of Los Angeles across her body the video tracks her mark-making with a microscope camera.
Under the circumstances of a global pandemic, political turmoil, racial violence, and her own immigration process, these seemingly colossal and uncontrollable forces nonetheless leave their impact on the body. Chung finds herself reflecting on these forces just as she tries to locate herself and her work and her practice within the geography of Los Angeles, and America.
