People and Places, Beyond Race and Faces

Stephanie Chen for AIA | June 2008

The KYOPO Project by Cindy Hwang, showing at the Korea Society through August, explores individuality and community of non-typical Koreans -- aside from that guy on LOST.

White walls and hardwood floors. They’ve got no taste, no style -- no feng shui -- and to the casual observer, any model posed against it would look good. He or she would pop with clarity as a balancing element to the barren and the way-too-bright.

However, in the KYOPO Project, a photojournalistic collection of portraits by Cindy Hwang, the white wall and wood is a canvas on which to splash 171 personalites, one movement and an entirely progressive story in global context. She captures a glimpse of the kyopos, a Korean term for those of Korean descent permanently living outside the peninsula as the result of a diaspora in the 1960’s.

Hwang’s work, on display at the Korea Society on Third Avenue through August, features upcoming restaurateurs, famous actors and even some regular joes that viewed as a whole seem disconnected from each other. While the monotonous background implies an assembly line effect, the singularity and repetition of each person's bare white wall create a vibrance of individual differences. A kid in a red Sex Pistols t-shirt stands a few rows away from a round-faced monk who lives in Harlem. Their only common ground, aside from the hardwood floor on which they pose, is that they consider themselves kyopo.

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The clicks of Jinyoung Kim’s heels echoed in the portrait gallery as she walked through to pick out a favorite. As the senior officer of the arts at the Korea Society, you’d think she’d need a minute to compare and contrast – or just find a good-looking face, if she was feeling a bit lazy.

“Here, this one,” said Kim, pointing to the image of a slender, tomboyishly prim woman wearing a neutral expression. Frontally posed, her two-toned necktie casually knotted around her neck instead of through her collar, and the toes of her knee-high socks were visible through the striped straps of her wedge heels. If she ever actually stood in the same room as a rakishly posed Maggie Kim, Korean-American rock chick, and an unusually stony Suchin Pak, MTV video jockey, the star power might drown her out. You never would guess the textuality of the life she lives.

“She was born in Seoul, raised in Denmark, and now she’s a professional architect,” Kim began. “Adopted with her two identical sisters, their mother identified them by different colored marks on their clothes—her Korean identity had an extra dimension, another complication of individuality which I find interesting.” It was not until taking an internship in America that she met her first Korean friend who wasn't adopted, who introduced her to the wonderful world of Korean barbecue, and the culture, of course.

Linda Choe Vestergaard, the woman in the photo, is one of 6.5 million kyopo in the world and one participant photographed by Hwang, who works under the name CYJO, a combination of her Korean and American names. Like both Vestergaard and Hwang, kyopos have settled in places near and far from their ancestral home, and since then have "broken boundaries, the norms and the characteristics, and expanded what it means to be Korean for so many people," Kim said.

Over 200 individuals since 2004 have filtered in and out of Hwang's New York apartment studio to be photographed. From the fashion industry to photography, she graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology and after having a photo published in the New York Times, began her artistic career. However, she started this particular project with no clear initial purpose or message to articulate, not even flaunting her hair and makeup skills.

Yet, the insights that arose are as diverse as those who stood in Hwang's living room for a photo shoot, each one being randomly selected by referrals from previous ones. This strategy produced a truly unique and intimate mix that traversed through New York City over the next three years. Some had been bar mitzvahed, others liked to eat their bagels with bulgogi and kimchi, and some (okay, maybe just one) starred on an Emmy award-winning drama series about plane crash survivors.

"It's a story about a person's relationship with their identity, their ancestral culture and the culture that they live in. A story that resonates with all individuals regardless of race," wrote Hwang in an e-mail, herself a Seoul-born Korean before moving to the United States 1-and a half years old. "It questions the definition of what a Korean is, a kyopo is, what an American is..."

Such definitions, along with answers to questions about identity and biographical information by each person photographed, are printed alongside each full-length portrait in a KYOPO book accompanying the exhibit. They vary in pushes and pulls between old nature and nurture, implying both conflicts and balances: a platinum dye-blonde fashionista with almond-shaped eyes chose her bold hair color as a fashion statement, while the monk living in Harlem claimed at her core, she would always be 'Korean.'

Samuel Jamier, the senior program officer for contemporary issues and corporate affairs at the Korea Society, had flipped through the book before. "Every single person's answer is quite impressive," he remarked. "Even people who I didn't think were interesting."

Jamier, who was born in Incheon, South Korea and raised in Brittany, France before dabbling in societal spaces across the globe, also struck a casual pose for the KYOPO Project. "Cindy called one day, it was very informal, and I wasn't as freaked out about some girl wanting to take my picture as I should have been -- but I'm not that much of a poser," he said, followed by a laugh.

Other participants might disagree about themselves. Some women posed in full evening gowns, other participants in t-shirts and jeans, while some men daringly chose suits or skins (leave it to stand-up comedian and “real life” wedding crasher Steve Byrne to pose topless). However, while the spread of photographs also reveals an energetic diversity within diversity, Hwang chose not to emphasize the beaten dead horse of “authentic” identity.

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As a platform for a new generation of Asian America filtered through a lens of Korean culture, at its core it is about community, representation, and perspective. Each participant is a facet of growing globalization, a diplomat for culture even when they do not live around what would be considered “native.” Allegiance to one’s heritage, coinciding with the expectation to exceed the notion of the “model minority” has inextricably been linked with success by older generations. Success meant a profession, and you can’t forget your roots, even when you make it to the top.

"Many of us grew up trying to be 'number one' in everything we did, losing sight of the reasoning behind our efforts. It's about creating a successful community of people rather than reaching the top by yourself, so 'mountains' can be moved more easily. The rope is only as strong as its individual fibers," Hwang elaborated.

Indeed the exhibit proposes new images and definitions of community, of success, and a new generation understands that.

“Korea is such a small country, and very united – the way they think, the way they behave. It doesn’t have a dominant element or strong resources, but its biggest power is probably people,” said Jinyoung Kim, reflecting on the exhibit.

Kyopos have approached Hwang and Kim with positive reactions, ranging from some simply expressing their relief at seeing others in similar situations, to native Koreans that started to cry after looking and learning about some of those profiled. At times, some of those Korean-born felt more “metropolized” and further removed from their “Koreanness,” while some members of younger generations felt a pull towards their ancestral roots. By encouraging viewers to reposition themselves in a global environment, the exhibit has achieved part of its purpose.

Photos by CYJO
As for the next step, while the KYOPO Project will not travel with the Korea Society’s other exhibits, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program (APAP) has given its stamp of approval to support the project. Hwang plans to scrape up some funding to publish the KYOPO book, already designed and laid out by an award-winning designer, after which the Smithsonian APAP will ensure the exhibition's display in Washington D.C. She envisions it in schools and universities as a valuable part of ethnic studies programs as far as Los Angeles, and eventually to a multi-year travelling exhibition in public and educational venues nationwide and abroad to Seoul.

“However, one step at a time,” Hwang insisted.

If you would like to help the KYOPO Project with its next steps, please contact Cindy at KYOPO.PROJECT@gmail.com.

Comments

[feng shui]

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[John Reyes]

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