Tan Tans’ Garden: The Cloning of Grief

Tan Tans’ Garden is a research-based practice deeply rooted in the creation and dissection of a parafictional world. Tan Tans’ Garden is a metaphorical parallel universe birthed by the effects that American imperialism had on the Korean Peninsula, the Korean culture, and the Korean diaspora. The works discuss the creation of this world along with the studies of its landscape and its historical ecology. The creative process manifests itself through critical analysis of histories and creative approaches to world-building, bookmaking, letter writing, collages, drawings, storytelling, object making, and video documentary. At the same time, the practice mutates itself into narratives of science-fiction and notions of post-humanism. I am heavily interested in how vulnerability, fermented memories, and the process of mourning can be utilized to explore the radiating violence of American imperialism. The works in Tan Tans’ Garden invite you to a fictional world in which the personal insights and intimate effects of being a byproduct of U.S. imperialism can be explored.