Jesse Chun. Valid from Until

About

Chun’s work explores the codes and constructs of belonging through the rhetoric of travel, migration and immigration. Working with a collection of multilingual documents that are largely from her own immigration archive, she employs the role of the artist as editor to recontextualize bureaucratic paperwork into Concrete Poetry and abstraction.

Chun selectively deletes the found texts on various immigration documents, while leaving all the fonts, spacing and sizing in their original context. The erasure is simple yet thoughtfully considered – intentionally transforming the paperwork into metaphors of our collective transit. She also uses methods of photography and digital manipulation to create abstractions that highlight the sheer volume, physicality and paper-ness of the forms that exist to validate our identities and mobility.

Chun’s poems and abstractions are devoid of their original function and individual specificity. By transforming the existing information, interrogation, and narratives of homeland, she constructs transcultural poetics of locating and dwelling.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and additionally in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.