Seoul to Cali 1, 2020, Mixed media

These series of works trace the path that my family took from South Korea to Southern California in the 1970s and 80s. This first piece in the series features my parents' wedding photo, taken in Seoul. Just a few short years later they would be in Los Angeles' Koreatown, where they would get their start on the American Dream.

Seoul to Cali 2, 2020, Mixed media

This second piece in the series shows me as a 3-year-old in Seoul, and the letters I wrote to my parents in LA, who'd left me with my grandparents back in the home country while they toiled to establish a foothold in America.

Seoul to Cali 3, 2022, Mixed media

In this third and final piece in the series, my family has made it; reunited in sunny LA to enjoy our piece of the suburban American dream: lawns, beaches, and fruit trees in the backyard. The flipside of that dream was cultural and generational discord, and a perpetual immigrants' feeling that we would never really belong.