Jet Lag Days

EunJung Park

Curated by Mo Kong

November 26 - December 31, 2022

Press:

BOMB Magazine. Interview with Tess Bilhartz

Press Release

A flight between New York and Seoul traverses a distance of 6,863 miles, takes 15 hours, and crosses a 13-hour time differential. Artist Eunjung Park repeats this trip several times a year.

When day and night are reversed and dawn becomes dusk, one may feel stuck in a time capsule or feel a deep sense of the surreal. The time difference produces a physiological effect due to the discrepancy between the traveler’s internal circadian rhythm and the outside world; however, this sense of the surreal may prove to be a gift, as it offers the jet-lagged individual a unique view on concepts like time, space, and social activity. Jet-lag as a physical phenomenon has interesting parallels in the context of the cultural experience of immigrants. In ‘The Silent Language’ (1973), Edward T. Hall claims that language itself is not the only barrier to cultural exchange; for example, immigrants must face subtler difficulties like the transition between high and low-context cultures. The constant discomfort and confusion experienced due to cultural difference extends the concept of “jet-lag” beyond a mere physiological phenomenon. This process of cultural adaptation, while varied and perhaps never complete, can often take years or even decades–a jet-lag of the spirit.

Dr. Anne Anlin Cheng has written of racial melancholia in Asian Americans; one of the coping mechanisms she elucidated was the pursuit of a “longdistance” identity, the projection of one’s identity thousands of miles away onto a group capable of acceptance. Perhaps for Asian immigrants, “Jet-lag Days” are a never-ending reality in which one uncannily experiences two worlds, one a shade whose imprint remains on the mind and in the body. Dislocation of time and space in Park’s new paintings becomes a symbol of the wormhole connecting two cultures. Her work revisits the hazy park at 2am; the repeated, twisted, and combined layers of biomorphic imagery become explicit expressions of emotions squeezed from exhausted bodies and semi-lucid minds. The figurative fragments flashing in the atmosphere show the determination to integrate into a new environment, yet there is always an element of that integration which remains just out of reach.

Eunjung Park was born in South Korea, where she received her BA with a focus in painting from Kookmin University. She moved to the United States to earn her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and went on to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2017. Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum, Doosan Gallery, 1969 Gallery, The Hole Gallery, Vox Populi, the Spring Break Art Show, Napoleon Gallery, the Nanji Publication Center, and SeoGyo Art Center in Korea. She participated in the Bronx Museum AIM Program, the Vermont Studio Center Residency, The Studios at Mass MoCA, and was a Semifinalist for the Sondheim Artscape Prize. Park’s work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, New American Paintings, Hyperallergic, and Bomb Magazine.