Conflict | Human Dimension
UNHCR, AFP: numbers and locations of Syrian refugees worldwide | 2017 | 51 x 56 cm
ISW: areas of control; UNHCR: numbers & locations of Syrian refugees and IDPs as of April 2019 | 2019 | 76 x 93 cm
Easter Offensive: the defense of Hue, 5 May 1972 | 2015 | 24 x 28 cm
Operation Lam Sơn 719: Love Letter from Hill 31 | 2016 | 36 x 29.7 cm
reconstructing an exodus history: boat trajectories in Asia | 2017 | acrylic, ink, and oil on drafting film 92 x 119 cm
Guatemala-Memory of Silence, CEH report: number of massacres by Department | 2019 | 96.5 x 63 cm
Hazard Location Map of Afghanistan—active: 6452, transitional: 548 | 2012 | ink and oil on paper | 110 x 150 cm
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992–1995 Ethnic Cleansing Campaign & 1997 SFOR Troop Deployment | 2012 | 110 x 70 cm
Hiroshima | 2010 | embroidery, metal grommets, buttons on canvas | 110 x 82 cm
Nagasaki | 2010 | embroidery, beads, metal grommets, buttons on canvas | 111 x 84 cm
crossing the boundary at the pass of Kel 1908 - Preah Vihear | 2010 | embroidery, beads, fake rhinestones on canvas | 61 x 61 cm
Push-Back of Cambodian Refugees: Preah Vihear Memorial Park | 2010 | embroidery, 3-D paint, metal grommets, buttons on canvas | 61 x 61 cm
Chung’s cartographic works reflect the failures of certain powers in articulating the ramifications of conflicts and geographical & political demarcations of land on a human level. In the map Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992–1995 Ethnic Cleansing Campaign & 1997 SFOR Troop Deployment (2012), Chung remapped memories of the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war (1992-1995), a war during which approximately 100,000 people were killed. She superimposed a map showing the dead & missing during this time on an ink drawing bearing the names of countries representing the 1997 NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) Troop Deployment for peace keeping. In the work Hazard Location Map of Afghanistan—active: 6452, transitional: 548 (2012), Chung charted the number of active and transitional landmines that are still in the country and mixed symbols of landmines with those of land cover such as vegetation, mountain, and desert areas. Each of Chung’s maps contains a complex system of coding, the legend for which the artist selectively provides. These legends are often informed by what is missing: the voices and memories of these landscapes’ inhabitants. She takes on the role of ethnographer and historian to further document what the cartographic records and statistics cannot: the lived experiences and personal accounts embedded in these topographies. Chung’s research-based, mixed-media installations often employ maps, sculptures, videos, and archival materials to convey such profound loss of memories and micro histories. Chung’s approach provides new dimensions of seemingly familiar historical events, reclaiming the narrative from the dominant discourse.
Related Exhibitions:
No Man's Land | Station Museum, Houston | 2020
Việt Nam, Past Is Prologue | Smithsonian American Art Museum | 2019
Passage of Time | Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York | 2019
New Cartographies | Asia Society Texas Center, Houston | 2018-2019
the unwanted population | Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York | 2017
Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter | MoMA, New York | 2016
All The World's Futures | 56th Venice Biennale | 2015
Re:emerge: Towards a New Cultural Cartography | Sharjah Biennial | 2013
Scratching the Walls of Memory | Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York | 2010