video documentation by Tanja Wol, photos by Christine Denck
20 minutes performance by Yong Sun Gullach
“Re-enacting the Transnational Adoptee” is interested in the life capability of a body of color by investigating the adopted subjects being in the world in a performative framework. By displaying how the subject is framed and displaced within the scope of Transnational Adoption through an attempt to emancipate the adopted body, re-performing the circumstances of the process and the constant battle of the right to self-definition for the Transnational Adoptee, Yong Sun Gullach embodies the process of the transnational adoptee.
Visualising the identification as adoptee in a western society and touching upon topics such as the price of a coloured body, losing name and language and the attempt to reclaim original culture through using sound, traces of language and her own body, the artist puts on display the risk of being seen as ungrateful, victimising her position and disloyal to the western culture tolerating her.
The performance uses rituals, theatre and lecture elements to frame the history of transnational Adoptions, pointing at the close link to the history of western colonization and emphasising the structural suppression and injustices inherited from the past.
Presented:
– “The Union”, Bolsjefabrikken, Copenhagen 15th of June 2019
– Living Archives, Malmø Kunstmuseum, Sweden 11th – 13th of April 2018
– Decolonial Daughters: How coloniality destroys family – On art, migration, decolonization and empowerment, curated by Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, La Casa de Barro, Amsterdam The Netherlands 17th-19th of February 2017
– SEAL Bi-annual seminar on Social Exclusion, Postcolonial Perspectives and Discrimination, Aalborg University, Copenhagen Denmark 6th of October 2016
– EVA International_Still (the) Barbarians A Symposium, Belltable Theater presented by EVA International, Limerick City Ireland 12th and 13th July 2016 – read a review here
– The 37th. Biennial EVA International 2016 “Still (the) Barbarians“, curated by Koyo Kouoh, Limerick City Ireland 2016
– FLAB Festival, Verdenskulturcentret, Copenhagen Denmark 20 september 2015
– Novam Artem Festival, Dome of Vision, Copenhagen Denmark 30th of July 2015,
– Miami Performance International Festival, Edge Zones Production, Miami USA 26th of June 2015
– Hysteria Festival, SOMA Gallery, Berlin Germany 11th of April 2015
– Artspace Westgermany, Berlin Germany 10th of April 2015