Artist Sung Kwan Bobby Park presents two unique, yet intertwined exhibitions this Auckland Pride Festival. Here he shares his frustratingly complicated and contradictory journey of being othered by his intersectionality.
When making work in an environment as an outsider, be it a queer individual in a heteronormative society, an Asian living in a Pākehā colonised world, an artist pursuing to carve out a life as a practitioner in an ultra-capitalistic society, a diaspora that does not fit within their own home country, etc, it can be difficult in the least. And damn, I have felt it and feel it often.
There can be a sense of great loneliness and uncertainty. Uncertain, I ask myself “Is my work right? Good enough? Too personal? Too vague? Too Asian? Too gay? Not enough colour or too colourful? Too big? Too small?”
This time of internal questioning is an important creative process but you guys, it is just a fancier way of describing and justifying fear, and I am completely exhausted physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And what’s really sad, funny, and relieving at the same time is that I am not alone in feeling this way.
The many dualities of identities gift me the chance to meet and connect with many communities and people that share these same concerns, often with vulnerability which I try to meet with grace and empathy. In those moments, my belief that a creative life comes at the cost of eternal solitude life is shattered. Trust me. Having lived the cosplay of a suffering artist, it don’t look cute.
My work in ceramic sculpture is a continuous exploration of identity and belonging. The BTM 방탄모 ceramic bulletproof helmet series came from reflecting on my time in Korea where in my early 20s I had to serve in the military to keep my Korean citizenship. People have a general sense of what that must have been like but what people don’t realise is that there are laws and policies, like Korean military law Article 92-6 that criminalises homosexuality.
The ceramic helmets communicate the constant anxiety that comes from living and working in institutions with homophobic laws and policies. That sense of protection is as fragile as having a dinner plate sitting on your head. And the fact that the threat is internal only contributes to the severity of the blow. Having such policies serves to educate people and society that it is okay to discriminate against sexual minorities. Through this work, I meet people who have seen or experienced similar experiences. We talk about what needs to change to better serve all of us. We build a community.
BTM Live during Auckland Pride is an expansion of that. The performance in a nutshell is me fisting clay in leather gear. Fisting, a word that provokes numerous imagery and ideas, is a sexual practice that has been vilified and made fun of as an example of sexual deviance often portrayed through the straight gaze.
This project is about taking back the power and owning our narrative. Let us as the queer community talk about our sexuality and how we value it. After all, sexuality is what makes our community queer. If it is not us who talk about it and let the non-queer, non-fisting people tell us how to think and feel, our community will continue to suffer from judgments and fear that is altogether not ours. Our identity is sexual, and we have different sex. I want us to say our sex is beautiful like works of art. See our sex as beautiful as making art. Let us self-identify and define ourselves. That is powerful. That is sexy.
