Biomythography
Investigating biomythography as an interdisciplinary visual arts practice.
Andrea Chung
b. 1978 Newark, NJ
Lives and works in San Diego, CA.
Artist Statement
My practice is an exploration of the relationships between materials, locations, and cultural processes. I focus primarily on island nations in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea and I am interested in labor and its complicated relationships with cultures that have developed from the descendants of people who were coerced into inhospitable colonial workforces. I make work that incorporates materials that are either significant to those cultures and their labor, or that signify broader themes of labor and migration.
I believe that I must include within my work an element of my own labor. It is not my intention to compare or equate my labor with the subjects in my pieces. Rather, I find that if I make a conscious decision to use a laborious process to cast objects in molten sugar or create elaborate cyanotype installations, then my labor itself becomes a medium.
Bio
Andrea Chung received a BFA at Parsons School of Design and a MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Chung has participated in several residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Headlands, Vermont Studio Center, the McColl Center for Visual Arts and the Joan Mitchell Center.
Chung was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, an Art Matters Grant and the Joan Mitchell Award. Her work has been published in ARC, Small Axe, Harvard’s Transitions and Representations and the Huffington Post.
Andrea Chung has exhibited nationally and internationally in institutions such as Syracuse University, McColl Center for Visual Arts, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Arthouse, Medulla Gallery in Trinidad, apexart, Deutsche Bank, Royal West of England Academy, Punkt Ø F 15 in Norway and the 2017 Jamaican Biennial.
Chung’s first solo museum show, You broke the in ocean in half just to be here… debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in May 2017 and will travel to UC Davis in 2018.
Chung’s work is currently at the Chinese American Museum and the California African American Museum as part of the 2017 Pacific Standard Time and in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art for Prospect 4: New Orleans The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, curated by Trevor Schoonmaker.