lost | born in translation
Directed, written, filmed, performed, translated, edited by C. Ryu
2022-2023
all imagery was produced by the Axis Q-19 thermal surveillance camera series
24:49 Minutes
1. 생존 Survival - mistranslated to Birth Zone
2. 원귀 Vengeful Ghost - mistranslated to Vengeful Ear
3. 가위눌림 Sleep Paralysis - mistranslated to Scissors that Press
Sound: Pansori (Korean traditional opera) performed by my deceased grandmother 임도순 Lim Do Soon in 1980s-1990s played from a tape player in Chapter Two.
Thermal camera provided by the Frank Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry.
lost | born in translation (left) & Time Liver (right) multimedia installation at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art in Pittsburgh, PA; Photo Credit to Tom Little; 2023
PART ILLUSION SHOW
PART COUNTER FICTION
PART REBIRTH
“Through her installations and video work, C.Ryu unveils archives of Korean feminist history through the practice of ghost hunting. These ghosts take the form of forgotten, nameless, or ignored women. In her recent work lost | born in translation (2022—2023), she unearths and channels Mago 마고, the goddess of creation who has been historically overshadowed by patriarchal counterparts. Through a seance, she utilizes Korean-to-English translation to trace the ghosts of Korean history. The concept is both innovative and familiar, as she employs sound and aesthetics reminiscent of the satanic panic to heighten the atmosphere. She both challenges and affirms the historicized and contemporary sexualized perceptions of Asian women through the same infrared technology where she, in the silhouette of a ghost, offers her menstruating body to be seen, consumed, and witnessed as a breathing, bleeding entity.”
- Julianne Miao, Curatorial Assistant, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
“Photographic technologies have never been a simple recording of the real; they have always been inflected with cultural and ideological perspectives, even if those inflections are often only legible with historical hindsight. C.Ryu reminds us that current cutting-edge photographic technologies—especially as they are increasingly applied to mass surveillance—are neither innocuous nor culturally neutral. Ryu cannily uses these technologies to capture a manner of self-presentation that engages specific taboos in traditional Korean culture. Though body temperature may be one of the few physiological characteristics that is consistent, outside of illness or death, across our species, Ryu’s videos made with an Axis Q-19 thermal surveillance camera demonstrate the fraught relationship betweern quantifiable biodata and what it means to be part of a cultural system.”
- Ian Wallace, Associate Curator, Amant
C.Ryu is a primarily video artist that celebrates women through research of Korean folklore and mythology as well as her own family history to celebrate and recognize women in a deeply patriarchal society. She is uncovering the ghosts of her past to liberate her own sense of self in videos such as lost|born in translation where she recently discovered her grandmother’s accomplishments such as being a published writer and expert in Korean opera. Her grandmother’s achievements were buried like so many of the stories of women in Korea and through her researched, she uncovers their stories in her haunting videos. She uses lo-fi ren- derings like thermals scans to give presence to women and deny any possibilities of an objectified viewing of them. Her works are unabashedly feminist through a Korean perspective.
- Jeffrey Lee, Partner, Ryan Lee Gallery
Performing for the lens, Ryu uses a thermal camera to document her body losing and gaining body heat that are considered shameful in the context of contemporary Korean culture – menstruation, cisgender female narcissism, nudity. Her footage produced by surveillance technology serves as a metaphorical resistance to the violent perspectives of patriarchy that has oppressed the contemporary Korean-American femme. All footage is completely filmed through the Axis Q-19 thermal surveillance camera series. There was no CG manipulation involved in this production. All imagery was made through an understanding of how heat is visualized through the machine and creating illusions that seem to defy the logic of reality.
The film is composed of three separate but related film chapters, each containing a different narrator. These narrators are voices that have been silenced in migrational and national history from personal oral histories to matriarchal mythologies. From tracing | translating the forgotten mythology of the 대모 Mother of all <MAGO 마고> to implicating Ryu’s own matriarchal history in cycles of patriarchy, to crafting a spell for multiplicity to exist for the diaspora in the present, Ryu uses this film as a way to amplify the feminist versions of history while being critical of the nostalgia and romanticization that surrounds diaspora storytelling. - C. Ryu
lost | born in translation has been shown at:
Miller Institute of Contemporary Arts, Pittsburgh PA, 2023
Weitman Gallery, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 2024
AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Award Winners Exhibition, NYC, NY, 2024
If you would like to see the film, email c.ryu.portal@gmail.com
