Drawing for 2 Languages, 2021, performance, blackboards, chalkTraversed Differences, Firstdraft
Curated by Sineenart Meena with Natalie Tso, Jana Ortanez and Tanaporn Norsrida
Drawing for 2 Languages is an ongoing series of performances by Lisa Myeong-Joo. This work extends from an initial series, Drawing for 2 Hands (2013), where the artist practices for the first time, not with her dominant left hand but with her right. In Traversed Differences Lisa presents an iteration of her ongoing series of two-handed drawings, where she uses both hands simultaneously to write in Korean and English on either side of a blackboard. The work shows a slow adjustment as Lisa moves in and out of two languages; one foreign, one familiar. Within her, these two sides meet; two hands come together. In the work, her body is a site of difference but also unity.
“It is between these parts that I try to work to place my body as my body with two hands working against but also in harmony with one another. My body presents the site of unity between these differences. My body is nourished by these differences to form who I am, an identity in a flow of gestures that is always active.”
This performative series revisits embodied sentiments felt across her time in South Korea as a Korean adoptee. In between the changing words and acts of writing, an absence-presence is performance; although the meaning remains the same.
Catalogue
Photo credit: Zan Wimberley
