Grief, motherhood, and mandu.

The Faraway Nearby: Memory, Inheritance, Identity — Part 1

Hi friends,

This week’s art piece is about being invited to be a contributing artist for The Faraway Nearby’s 2024 curatorial project last spring. It was my first time ever being asked to be a part of an art exhibition, which was such an honor, but I was also in the middle of massive grief and my first pregnancy. I was really excited about the opportunity, but I also felt like, “Can I really do this? Am I an artist?” In this newsletter, I talk about the experience of being invited and the art piece I submitted for The Faraway Nearby. And at the end, I’ve also included a mixtape. It’s a collection of introspective songs that encapsulated my January. I hope it resonates.

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What art did you make this week? The small, the ordinary, the surprising, the extraordinary — share the art you made this week in the comments.

We made it to Friday, friends.

Surviving is the goal.
Surviving is the victory.

I’m proud of you. I’m proud of me. I’m proud of us.

With love,
Jieun

Grief, motherhood, and mandu

Last April, I was invited to be a part of my first art exhibition.

On April 1, 2024, I received a letter from Jiyeon Paik, 백지연, inviting me to participate in her curatorial project, The Faraway Nearby. Jiyeon is an independent curator based in New York, and The Faraway Nearby is a collaborative project she created that fosters vulnerable, honest conversations between Asian women artists about how they navigate their intersectional identities.

Every year, The Faraway Nearby invites eight artists — pairing two artists as conversation partners — and documents their five-month-long dialogue process as the conversations unfold. The themes for 2024 were: memory, inheritance, and identity.