My transition from Korea to America has been conflated with my transition from a girl into a woman. I have found similarities, but also vital differences between the two cultures. The clash of these identities caused a great deal of confusion during my teenage years. As this unfamiliarity was expanding my perceptions, the confusion became located in objects.

My parents run a dry cleaning business. Washing, drying, pressing and delivering customers’ shirts involves a variety of materials and labor patterns. I engage my own repetitive working process with similar intensity toward the transformation of the objects and materials I use. The unsettling shower curtain, covered with images of eyes from magazines, points to the scrutiny that binds the experiences of being an immigrant and being a woman. A row of nail polish containers embodies at once the freedom and pressures of becoming a woman in America. A door made of combination locks is a metaphor for a cultural environment that is hard to access.

My studio practice, which emphasizes repetitive action, is a way for me to process these transitions, both in terms of the thinking behind each piece and the meditative process of its production. This dual focus on material and process is a way for me to embed something intangible, the value of hard work or a personal memory, into an art object.