What the Tide Breaks

Apr 1

Written By Ok-ja Kwon

I arrange the broken shells by what is missing.

Nacre opens to salt air— smooth chamber, weathered hull. Each half holds the shape of its other.

ཨ

My fingers trace the fracture, searching.

ཨ

Mother— do you also kneel at the edge? Tide pool. Photograph. The absent weight in the hands.

ཨ

Light enters through the break.

Ok-ja Kwon

Ok-ja Kwon (b. 1981) is a Korean-born, transracial adoptee artist

who communicates through intimate illustrative image-making.

In response to one's survivalist attempts to transcend an identity historically rooted in imperialism, global capitalism, and desirability, Kwon draws upon metaphors that take ritualistic form. The enactment of "witnessing" provides a compilation of whispered ideations and fragmented (re)imagined remembrances of in-betweenness, all in an attempt to build an intuitive and otherworldly bridge to transcend blurred relations.

https://www.okjakwon.studio