A common phrase used when asking about a stranger or asking one to establish one’s character is “What’s your story?”, or in relation to other people, “what’s his/her/their story?”. With language, we have built the assumption that one’s narrative equates to one’s identity. In accepting this concept as a position from which to communicate the self, I seek to explore the concepts of language, narrative and identity with a finger planted firmly in every cultural pie available to me.

In these places I continue to explore and search for patterns, mimicked from the folklore and folktales I have discovered, from the historical research and references to the motifs that reoccur in my mother’s life and ultimately what has been carried into my own. I have conversations with her, my mother, investigating a life before I existed, to examine her story and become more familiar with her. I ask for a window into a time in South Korea that I will never know, to a place I am connected to but have never lived. It was in this dilution of mimesis, this game of telephone, where the information has slowly trickled and transformed. Traversing across layers of time, language, and location I attempt to understand.

To build bridges.