Tracing… … …

Tracing… … … brings together artists Eun Lee, Janette Oh, and Basharat Ali Syed, whose interdisciplinary practices examine the complex interplay of language, movement, and memory. Shaped by migration, cultural transformation, and shifting environments, their works explore the ephemeral nature of presence––how identity is continuously formed and reshaped by inherited traditions and evolving surroundings. Through personal yet universally resonant narratives, the exhibition navigates the fluid bonds between past and present, self and other, offering insight into the deeply felt experiences of displacement and belonging. Through spatial interventions, material layering, and mark-making, the artists build a conceptual bridge between fragmented histories and lived experience. Their work meditates on the tension between permanence and transience, reflecting on how cultural identities are inscribed onto space and how spiritual, emotional, and historical bonds endure across time and distance.

Eun Lee alters a stack of Hwatu (화투; 花鬪; flower battle) cards brought from Korea, embedding them with personal and communal memories tied to migration and reflecting on his choices of what he carried across the ocean moving from Korea to the United States. Janette Oh weaves, ties, loosens, and wraps textiles around sculptural forms, evoking the ephemeral yet ever-present nature of objects and memory. Blurring the line between the fragile temporality of human experience and the permanence of presence, Oasis captures the tension between what is fleeting and what endures. Through softness and structure, vulnerability and labor, Oh invites the viewer into a space where personal memory becomes collective material. Basharat Ali Syed reflects on his home in Kashmir, India, continuously contemplating existence through the lens of duality. His pieces explore the relationship between old languages and new media, juxtaposing traditional fabrics with contemporary fabrications of cultural objects. This aesthetic engagement fosters empathy, vulnerability, drawing parallels in investigating the remnants of memory in cultures of oppression and evoking ironic dichotomies between reverence and violence.

Tracing… … … invites us to reimagine migration not simply as physical movement but as an ongoing negotiation of history, memory, and selfhood. It is a meditation on the spiritual and universal connections that bind individuals to places, cultures, and one another—an exploration of the invisible threads that linger beyond sight, shaping our collective understanding of identity and belonging.

Artists

Eun Lee, Janette Oh, Basharat Ali Syed

Curator

Seoyoung Kim