Miyoung Chang ~ Keywords: silence, mother tongue, double negative, fragments, peripheral scenes, insignificant actions in parentheses, wrongful grammar, the first person, the third person, writing, [dog barking from a distance]
Miyoung Chang is a visual artist based in Seoul and Rotterdam. Since 2021, she has been a member of the women visual artist community "Louise the Women," founded in South Korea. Her works explore diverse mediums, including film, writing, static performance, broken objects, prints, photography, and drawing.
Through the lens of the written first person "나" (I), Miyoung's research stems from the question of fractured modernity reflected in contemporary Korean literature. Her investigation spirals the notion of "mother tongue" in the purview of Language as Gestalt and the indifference of universality. She is interested in the act of writing and translation entangled with the hand that resists announcing an end by putting a period. Within the impossibility, the cursor moves: from left to right, from top to a line below. Her "she" belongs in the remnants of suspended belonging, mouth shut, eyes wide opened.
However, broken features never cease to return in the guise of a narrative that conceals its own incoherence. Element by element, the "I," no, "she" retrospects, only to find that the closest definitive is the peripherals. Like this, she (re)collects scattered images and textual objects and translates them into an elongated collage of scenes where the sole distinguishable protagonist is [a dog barking from a distance]. Why? Because one night, the mother shouted to the daughter to never live the life she had lived. Even in this self-despising statement, the "I" was nowhere to be found.
Through the lens of the written first person "나" (I), Miyoung's research stems from the question of fractured modernity reflected in contemporary Korean literature. Her investigation spirals the notion of "mother tongue" in the purview of Language as Gestalt and the indifference of universality. She is interested in the act of writing and translation entangled with the hand that resists announcing an end by putting a period. Within the impossibility, the cursor moves: from left to right, from top to a line below. Her "she" belongs in the remnants of suspended belonging, mouth shut, eyes wide opened.
However, broken features never cease to return in the guise of a narrative that conceals its own incoherence. Element by element, the "I," no, "she" retrospects, only to find that the closest definitive is the peripherals. Like this, she (re)collects scattered images and textual objects and translates them into an elongated collage of scenes where the sole distinguishable protagonist is [a dog barking from a distance]. Why? Because one night, the mother shouted to the daughter to never live the life she had lived. Even in this self-despising statement, the "I" was nowhere to be found.
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Learn more about Miyoung Chang's written MA thesis (DAI, 2022): <Working Title: Working Doc—Edited>
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Follow Miyoung's "Life after DAI" by means of her website