Adele 이슬 Kenworthy
Smithsonian Summer Solstice Saturday || June 22, 2024
We Should Talk:
CUT FRUIT/과일깍자!
National Museum of Asian Art
Washington, D.C.
CUT FRUIT/과일까가! came to the National Museum of Asian Art in 100-degree weather with over 300lbs of Korean melons and Asian pears for their Smithsonian Solstice Saturday celebration. I was joined by artists Xena Ni and Thu Anh Nguyen as I cut fruit for hundreds of visitors and everyone came with the most incredible memories of love and care and visible hope.
For many Asian/Asian American family, fruit is shared as an act of love in abundance, often present at a child’s first birthday celebration in Korea, called a doljanchi; given in oversized boxes as housewarming gifts; and placed at altars for even our ancestors to enjoy.
Instead of price per pound signs, CUT FRUIT/과일깍자! invites us to carry the questions asked between the peels and slices:
what is the first taste you can remember?
what is something you always wished someone had asked and knew about you?
what fruit carries your favorite memories?
who is allowed to gather?
who is allowed rest?
You can learn more about this project at curiosityconnects.us/weshouldtalk
This project is the third installment of the We Should Talk series, created by Philippa Pham Hughes, Adele Yiseol Kenworthy, and Xena Ni. We Should Talk received Federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and the American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Photos of the performance taken on film by Lynn Le.
CUT FRUIT/과일깍자!
National Museum of Asian Art
Washington, D.C.
CUT FRUIT/과일까가! came to the National Museum of Asian Art in 100-degree weather with over 300lbs of Korean melons and Asian pears for their Smithsonian Solstice Saturday celebration. I was joined by artists Xena Ni and Thu Anh Nguyen as I cut fruit for hundreds of visitors and everyone came with the most incredible memories of love and care and visible hope.
For many Asian/Asian American family, fruit is shared as an act of love in abundance, often present at a child’s first birthday celebration in Korea, called a doljanchi; given in oversized boxes as housewarming gifts; and placed at altars for even our ancestors to enjoy.
Instead of price per pound signs, CUT FRUIT/과일깍자! invites us to carry the questions asked between the peels and slices:
what is the first taste you can remember?
what is something you always wished someone had asked and knew about you?
what fruit carries your favorite memories?
who is allowed to gather?
who is allowed rest?
You can learn more about this project at curiosityconnects.us/weshouldtalk
This project is the third installment of the We Should Talk series, created by Philippa Pham Hughes, Adele Yiseol Kenworthy, and Xena Ni. We Should Talk received Federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and the American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Photos of the performance taken on film by Lynn Le.
Museum Square Blooms
Chinatown Park
I St NW, Washington, DC
There are less than 300 Chinese residents remaining in DC’s Chinatown, many of them our elders and many of them facing active displacement. When Chinatown Arts Studio invited me to join their efforts to #savemuseumsquare without hesitation I said yes.
So much of my work in the last few years think a lot about what happens during occupation and war and what gestures and rituals we hold as places of comfort. And so the idea of home for me is more about how do I carry the memories of geographic longing that belong to my parents, how do I carry the ones that belong to me, and how do I carry both at the same time.
As the fight to preserve the history of Chinatown DC continues by protecting the remaining living residents now, instead of this practice of asking Where are you from? Where are you really from? What is your name? What is your real name?
We can ask:
Where do you claim? What claims you?
How do you carry memories of home?
How do you long to be remembered?
Whose stories do you carry?
Thank you to the organizers for doing the real work, for the opportunity to witness and support, and for believing art and flowers can nourish movements like this.
Immense gratitude for the floral support from Flowers By MJ.
This event was funded in part by the Awesome Foundation.
Visit www.SaveChinatownDC.org to learn more.
Photos provided by Save Chinatown DC
Chinatown Park
I St NW, Washington, DC
There are less than 300 Chinese residents remaining in DC’s Chinatown, many of them our elders and many of them facing active displacement. When Chinatown Arts Studio invited me to join their efforts to #savemuseumsquare without hesitation I said yes.
So much of my work in the last few years think a lot about what happens during occupation and war and what gestures and rituals we hold as places of comfort. And so the idea of home for me is more about how do I carry the memories of geographic longing that belong to my parents, how do I carry the ones that belong to me, and how do I carry both at the same time.
As the fight to preserve the history of Chinatown DC continues by protecting the remaining living residents now, instead of this practice of asking Where are you from? Where are you really from? What is your name? What is your real name?
We can ask:
Where do you claim? What claims you?
How do you carry memories of home?
How do you long to be remembered?
Whose stories do you carry?
Thank you to the organizers for doing the real work, for the opportunity to witness and support, and for believing art and flowers can nourish movements like this.
Immense gratitude for the floral support from Flowers By MJ.
This event was funded in part by the Awesome Foundation.
Visit www.SaveChinatownDC.org to learn more.
Photos provided by Save Chinatown DC
2022
what is something you always wished I asked and knew about you?
NEXT 2022
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran School of Art & Design
Washington, D.C.
In the height of lockdown and grief during the pandemic, I stumbled across an obscure floral arrangement book written by a Korean florist in the 90s.
In this book she states that the origin of this practice of floral arranging — which is widely attributed to Japan as ikebana — is appropriated from the Korean practice of kong yong hwa, placing flowers at the feet of Buddha.
This led me to have a conversation with a researcher and scholar who justifiably asked if is this verifiable. and as I dove deeper into this question, another one emerged for me, what memories is this florist carrying that called her to say that in the first place?
Do I need to reconcile the memories I’ve inherited with the memories of the colonizer?
what is something you always wished i had asked and knew about you? is a question I’ve continued to ask my umma as we’ve both grown older, each decade emerging a new answer.
The family photos in this series was a gift from my appa after 18 years of estrangement. His silent act of hanging onto a memory of us. The photos were all taken by my umma and exist as evidence my body was present even in the absence of my own memories.
These cocoji floral sculptures and the last few remaining photos from my family archive are the artifacts in our intergenerational, transnational struggle to remember.
NEXT 2022
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran School of Art & Design
Washington, D.C.
In the height of lockdown and grief during the pandemic, I stumbled across an obscure floral arrangement book written by a Korean florist in the 90s.
In this book she states that the origin of this practice of floral arranging — which is widely attributed to Japan as ikebana — is appropriated from the Korean practice of kong yong hwa, placing flowers at the feet of Buddha.
This led me to have a conversation with a researcher and scholar who justifiably asked if is this verifiable. and as I dove deeper into this question, another one emerged for me, what memories is this florist carrying that called her to say that in the first place?
Do I need to reconcile the memories I’ve inherited with the memories of the colonizer?
what is something you always wished i had asked and knew about you? is a question I’ve continued to ask my umma as we’ve both grown older, each decade emerging a new answer.
The family photos in this series was a gift from my appa after 18 years of estrangement. His silent act of hanging onto a memory of us. The photos were all taken by my umma and exist as evidence my body was present even in the absence of my own memories.
These cocoji floral sculptures and the last few remaining photos from my family archive are the artifacts in our intergenerational, transnational struggle to remember.
August 10 – August 20, 2022
to carry within us an orchard
E19: Artistic Interventions
Transformer Gallery
Washington, D.C.
to carry within us an orchard was developed during my time as part of Transformer’s 19th year of their Exercises for Emerging Artists program.
what is the first taste you can remember?
to carry within us an orchard, a line from Li Young Lee’s From Blossoms, is a poem that celebrates community at every point of connection. As a first generation American with immigrant parents – in all the language and cultural divides that separated us – this exhibition explores the embodied gestures and rituals of care that fill the silences between us. I brought cut fruit to Transformer as an intervention in this country’s landscape of care as a commodity.
The exhibition included the artist daily returning to the gallery to cut fruit for vistors; a cut fruit circle+community organizing workshop for AAPI femme artists based in the DC metro area; and a collage series that included photo submissions from the public, the artist’s family archive, and found historical images. I invited my mother to collaborate by cutting fruit for the workshop and commissioning a flag, as a gesture to reclaim the memory of her sewing garden flags to support us as children – a skill passed down from her mother.
You can learn more about the exhibition at transformerdc.org/e19
Photos by Mariah Miranda
E19: Artistic Interventions
Transformer Gallery
Washington, D.C.
to carry within us an orchard was developed during my time as part of Transformer’s 19th year of their Exercises for Emerging Artists program.
what is the first taste you can remember?
to carry within us an orchard, a line from Li Young Lee’s From Blossoms, is a poem that celebrates community at every point of connection. As a first generation American with immigrant parents – in all the language and cultural divides that separated us – this exhibition explores the embodied gestures and rituals of care that fill the silences between us. I brought cut fruit to Transformer as an intervention in this country’s landscape of care as a commodity.
The exhibition included the artist daily returning to the gallery to cut fruit for vistors; a cut fruit circle+community organizing workshop for AAPI femme artists based in the DC metro area; and a collage series that included photo submissions from the public, the artist’s family archive, and found historical images. I invited my mother to collaborate by cutting fruit for the workshop and commissioning a flag, as a gesture to reclaim the memory of her sewing garden flags to support us as children – a skill passed down from her mother.
You can learn more about the exhibition at transformerdc.org/e19
Photos by Mariah Miranda