JIWON CHOI
A Vestige of Remains, 2015, New York
Photo by Adele Schelling
Title Video by Netta Laufer
I stood barefoot facing the corner of the wall and started speaking about discomforting memories and situation that were related to my gender. I had never revealed these experiences before. A voice recognition program transcribed my words which were then projected onto my body. The technology distorted, misunderstood my words as they were murmured into the walls. The act of revealing these traumatic memories produced a sense of anxiety which manifested in physical reactions. I felt like hiding, I began to sweat, shiver and leaned into the wall rubbing my face against it which muffled and disrupted my speech.
'A Vestige of Remains’ dwells in between performance art and abstract drawing. The performance becomes a process of making a drawing as an end result. The physical and the psychological presence of the past is turned into a physical trace, the vague imprint of my face remains after the performance.
The execution of the drawing was dependent on the shape of the corner, the emotions I felt at that moment, and the makeup I was wearing.