6. TJ Shin & Jia Sung
TJ Shin and Jia Sung talk about their recent work, folk tales, female rage, and the reframing of power.
Jia Sung, 牛魔王(bull demon king), 2019, acrylic, embroidery thread, and glass beads on stretched canvas.
Jia Sung (JS): This piece that we were talking about when you came in, I feel like I've been working on it, not continuously, but for three to four months. I started it in the winter when I was really struggling with making work. so a lot of things like the embroidery of the Chinese characters and the blood drops were like busy work, in some ways. My vision for this piece was based off the Chinese folktale 竇娥冤, The Injustice of Dou’e. It’s quite moralistic in its original form, unsurprisingly very Confucian — a virtuous daughter sold off as a child bride is wrongfully framed for murder, and so she’s executed. And at her execution she swears up and down to her innocence, and that heaven will send proof in the form of a rain of blood, snow in June… that the blood would fly up as she was beheaded, without touching her clothes. And that there would be a three year drought. Prophecies, heavenly punishment and all that stuff. I was really drawn to the theme of apocalypse, but also this idea of a woman, a gendered body, a marginalized body experiencing — the violence inflicted on that body, but also this vengeance that is backed by heaven itself.
TJ Shin (TS): In folklore, the body is the origin of everything we know, like in John’s passage in the Bible, “The Word became flesh.” The woman represents purity, virginity, nature, motherhood, birth, reproduction.
JS: It’s a sad moral tale. I was drawn to its obscene levels of vengeance and lashing out.
TS: How are you able to redress or subvert these folk stories?
JS: Who gets to be the protagonist and who speaks?
TS: It reminds me of the anthropologist Trinh T. Min-Ha. She explains she wants to “speak nearby” the Other, rather than “speak about” the Other.
Jia Sung, apocalypse hymn, 2021, acrylic, gouache, glass beads, embroidery thread, and grommets on unstretched linen.
JS: I’m also super interested in the work you were sharing during our walk, the idea of the human nervous system. Would you talk more about that? You mentioned the idea of scent. The trajectory of your work up to now has been about metabolizing the politics and histories literally through digestive mechanism of our bodies. Bringing this down to the nervous system and tracing legacy through those pathways is really interesting to me; it feels quite different from your previous work on fermentation and digestion.
TS: My project is inspired by the novel The Vegetarian by Han Kang. The female protagonist, Yeong-Hye, is a victim of domestic abuse. She is sexualized by various patriarchs, her husband and father. One day she has a nightmare and becomes a vegetarian. After that, she slowly becomes a vegetable. It was profound to me because in comparison to Western ways of thinking about power, the protagonist intentionally gives away power. Eunjung Kim explains objecthood is a way to radically empathize with the Other. Critical disability scholars talk about objecthood as a generative framework without reclaiming liberal humanity or able-bodiedness. In becoming an object or a vegetable, I think Yeong-Hye is trying to be genderless, without becoming a he or a she. I like to think she is subverting how we understand animacies or bodily hierarchies. Later, I was thinking about the human nervous system and its likeness to mugwort, roots, and mycelium networks. Mugwort is considered an invasive weed in the U.S. because of its tentacular root structure. In my new body of work, I am creating a custom mugwort scent that is infused with my DNA. How do I exist as the Other and become the Other? How do I continue to exist in my deformation or desubjectivization? I am interested in the smell of the body. I want to resist the liberalization of our bodies and instead consider how our injuries can be fragmented or located in our collectivized bodies. You were talking about the female form, not as a specific figure but as a collectivized body.
TJ Shin, Untitled (Incubator #2), 2020, soil from Wave Hill woodland forest, rice, plexiglass, wood, stainless steel plaque. 44 x 16 x 49 inches.
JS: Absolutely, and the symbol of violence but also rage against violence. When I look past the trappings of Confucian morality, the kind of signifying language of virtue, what I see is rage and desire for justice. What does that look like? Violence and retribution, punishment-based justice; it’s not necessarily the future I want to envision, but making space to understand where those desires come from. I’m interested in reading this project against The Vegetarian. You were considering the book through the lens of power, giving away power and accruing power. That’s interesting because when I think about that book, I think about the relationship between eating disorders and trauma. It’s very common in the wake of trauma, specifically sexual assault, to develop an eating disorder. It’s a form of control, a manifestation of desire, an attempt to regain control of your body, since it’s the one thing you might have a say over.
TS: What is very interesting is the first two chapters are told from the perspective of the protagonist. But the third chapter is told from the perspective of her sister. I'm struck by this impossibility of understanding her narrative. She’s hospitalized...
JS: ...right! Because the sister visits her in the asylum.
TS: Exactly. The protagonist is refusing to eat because she wants to be a tree and she feels very akin to the tree that’s outside of her asylum window. In order to become the Other, Yeong-Hye practices asceticism, a severe form of discipline to get rid of desire, human and carnal desire.
JS: Right, that’s such a tradition across all religions. This sort of self-castigation and self-denial echoes religiosity.
TS: And again this idea of why would anyone want to intentionally relinquish power.
JS: Yes, and in what framework of power.
TJ Shin, Untitled (Incubator #1), 2020. Indigenous microorganism, sugar, glass jars, foam cooler, digital thermometer, stainless steel plaque. 26 x 19 x 39 inches.
TJ’s assignment to Jia:
Mugwort is a psychosomatic herb that helps you lucid dream. Forge fresh mugwort leaves. They are dark green and have hairy stems. The underside is silver white. Gather a handful and fold it in breathable cloth. Tuck it under your pillow. Write down your dream.
Reference photo from TJ Shin
JS: I gather by invented rules: any leaf that falls and touches the ground is forfeit. I wonder how much mugwort is needed to dream a prophecy. I keep plucking. When I am tired I wade back through unnameable unmown grasses, trampling upturned faces of buttercups, flushing grey birds from underfoot. The flat package of linen-swaddled leaves travels home in my tote. It smells spicy, like rosemary or lavender. I wonder if being pressed up to my wallet will influence the dream. If the book of comparative journeys will send my spirit questing, or if the empty m&m wrapper will tie me to secular visions.
Between harvest and sleep, my grandmother dies.
I clean my face and hands, take nyquil, strip down. In my dream, I am held until I struggle, and then held until I give up, my ribcage pushing back against the rhythm of embrace.
Jia’s assignment to TJ:
Brew yourself a pot of your favorite tea. When it is steeped, pour a cup. With each sip, begin a breath meditation, breathing in for a slow count of 4, holding for 4, and exhaling for 4. Take 16 sips in this way. Tell me what you experienced.
TJ: A running body of water to the edge of fingertips.
A loose esophagus.
Intoxication of dirt.
Memories of mom during monsoon season.
Isn’t it wild how your insides can tolerate such high temperatures? Where does this temperature go?
TJ Shin is a Canadian-Korean artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Shin explores the porousness of bodily boundaries and the ceaseless movement of living processes, like fermentation, echoing the history of colonialism. They are interested in the history of conquest and the literal digestion of materials – smells, microbes, and food – as a system of relations that emerges from a complicated history of entanglement.
jaeyeonshin.com @fff00slut
Jia Sung is a Singaporean Chinese artist currently based in Brooklyn. She uses the familiar visual language of folklore to examine and subvert parameters set around the humanity of women, queer people, and those considered ‘other.’Drawing on motifs from Chinese mythology and Buddhist iconography, she decenters the cisheteronormative values embedded within these archives by reinterpreting them through a queer feminist lens.
jia-sung.com @jiazilla