Скачать или смотреть ‘Prayers’ Quinn Emanuel Artist Residency Exhibition at Bradbury Building, Chanted by Kyong Boon Oh

2/15-3/15/25
The exhibition Prayers is dedicated to my mother who has left this world during the artist residency. Without her, it feels like I’m in another universe. The weight of a single soul can alter an entire cosmos. We share this.

“Prayers” encompasses over two decades of my art practice—a deeply personal exploration of identity and redemption. It addresses my concerns about reviving what has been abandoned through the repetition and layering of materials, representing my spiritual practice as a meditative ritual.

The video installation ‘Prayers’ weaves together my harmonic glossolalia (speaking in tongues, an unknown language to the speaker, commonly associated with Pentecostal and charismatic Christian traditions) with footage of my mother and father and my weaving process and reflects my wish that, if her soul ever lost its way, it would be guided by the song and find the path. Harmonic glossolalia is a meditative and transformative act, helping me to let go of control and allow the materials to guide me. The repetitive weaving mirrors the rhythm of chanting, a physical manifestation of the vocal sound. It opens a space of vulnerability, becoming a spiritual dialogue between the material, my body, and something beyond myself. It infuses the work with a spiritual presence, becoming a vessel for connection, both personal and collective.

There are three site-specific sculptural installations on view.
‘Mediators’ reflects my prayers for lost souls, manifesting time and identity’s fluidity with a commentary on redemptive identity.
‘Resurrection’ features hundreds of crosses, each made by hand-weaving metal wire onto discarded branches. These crosses are then collaged into a single large cross and placed on the floor, allowing viewers to take a small cross with them. Religion and spirituality are integral to my art practice, not just as thematic elements but as embodied practices that guide my creation.
‘Revival’ consists of around a thousand water bottles that I’ve consumed over ten years. Like my mother, who collected water bottles for reuse, I now gather, cut, layer, and weave them one over another. This act is my prayer, for now.

Placing the woven metal sculptures alongside the video work, both emphasizing repetition, was an intentional choice to establish a dialogue between the tactile and the temporal about the interconnectedness of material and time. The video, with its glossolalia and fragmented narratives, offers an ephemeral, performative element that contrasts with the permanence of the sculptures. Together, they reflect the duality of memory: its fleeting nature, and its lasting impact on our lives and identities.

My project “Prayers” seeks to embrace both failure and vulnerability as integral parts of the creative process, serving as a testament to my ongoing battle between what I aspire to achieve and what reality presents. Through revealing vulnerabilities and prolonged failures which are not just painful but also bittersweet, a mix of sorrow and longing intertwined with my spiritual practice, my work explores the struggle about the human condition and salvation: Is healing and recovery truly possible? The wait for an answer, often feeling like an endless war against time itself, enlightens me that my artistic journey is not just a personal struggle—it is a calling, a trial that transcends time and space with aspirations for redemption. The war is within, with no shortcuts where the true meaning of surrender is understood only when fully spent. In this surrender, I find peace that even in my brokenness, I am not forsaken.