The Labor of US Citizenship, One Sew at a Time
LOS ANGELES — Rhythmic beats of Korean drums and chants fill the hallway earlier than getting into the exhibition, virtually like an auditory map guiding people to websites of protest. Upon getting into, the pungmul drum beats louder, and the viewer is confronted with colourful, patterned banners, some sewn and a few printed. Hung from the ceiling, these banners show messages of solidarity corresponding to a neon inexperienced textual content stating “Aliens Welcome,” subsequent to an equally neon picture of an alien in entrance of notes of commemoration itemizing all the Atlanta spa capturing victims in March of 2021. Behind the banners on a wall projection, members of Woori Sori — an all-women Korean percussion group based mostly in Chicago — smile and nod to one another as they drum with a quiet pleasure. The work is a part of the exhibition Speaking Again to Energy: Initiatives by Aram Han Sifuentes on the Skirball Cultural Heart, which places on full view the labor of immigrant girls as they discover footing in a brand new nation.
Aram Han Sifuentes begins private: The primary art work to the fitting is an ink drawing of persimmons by her mom Younghye Han, an immigrant from South Korea. Within the accompanying textual content, she writes that although her mom dreamed of being an artist, upon immigrating to America she as an alternative discovered work as a seamstress and taught a younger Han Sifuentes how one can sew as a result of “it’s helpful.” The simultaneous present and sacrifice supplied by her mom each colour and contextualize the themes surveyed across the invisibilized and gendered labor of immigrant girls all through your entire exhibition — herself included.
Lots of Han Sifuentes’s works offered within the present are ongoing and durational. All of them, whether or not accomplished in collaboration or alone, in efficiency or in personal, are supposed to be constructed upon. She works in samples: of denim scraps with sewn-in solutions from interviews of twenty-three garment staff, all of them immigrant girls; of a painstakingly researched record of citizenship questions; and of quilts answering these very questions, hand-sewn by 100 immigrants for whom she hosted a collection of embroidery and citizenship workshops. The final pattern quilts had been offered for $725 (the price of making use of for citizenship) as proceeds for these people. As if making her personal census, Han Sifuentes surveys teams of immigrants with full lives and tales past the definitions of arbitrary state borders and much more arbitrary rites of passage, reflecting the endless nature of the analysis, labor, and proof wanted by an immigrant with a purpose to exhibit their belonging.
Beginning with the standard acknowledgment of all of her collaborators, Han Sifuentes opens house for guests to borrow banners from her “Protest Banner Lending Library” (2016–current) or to make one themselves in banner-making workshops. Collectively, one other model of this world is feasible — one with open borders and security for all individuals. Speaking Again to Energy: Initiatives by Aram Han Sifuentes reminds us that artmaking has the ability to bridge the non-public and political, and envision social circumstances the place everyone can belong.
Speaking Again to Energy: Initiatives by Aram Han Sifuentes continues at Skirball Cultural Heart (2701 North Sepulveda Boulevard, Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles) by means of September 4. The exhibition was organized by the museum.