Tiffany Joy Butler
Sareh Imani
Julie Yunhee Moon
Exhibition Dates
June 5 – July 31
First Saturday Opening Reception on June 5, 11-6pm
About the Exhibition: Memory Work features a selection of video works by Tiffany Joy Butler, Sareh Imani, and Julie Yunhee Moon, artists who each share close connections to their family and roots – cherishing various cultural heritages. The works selected for this exhibition explore heritage, notions of femininity, familial archives, belonging, and identity. Each artist contributes a unique perspective on memory along with a playful sense of humor, commenting on the curiosities and exploitations of labor within a variety of contemporary industries.
About the Artists:
Tiffany Joy Butler: As a Black Puerto Rican artist working in the craft of filmmaking, painting and writing, I use these mediums to speak out about the injustices of colorism, topical steroid addiction and as a way to cherish family lineages. Whether it is writing the script for a surrealist political comedy, scientifically investigating a human body’s cells for a painting or researching my parents’ love story for an experimental documentary, the style is always a cryptic mix of melancholy and absurdity.
Sarah Imani: As an Iranian US-based artist, my work explores the reparative potentials of intimacy and distance by examining ways to achieve resourcefulness, through care, mending, and healing in times of inadequacy.In my practice, I use medical devices and methodologies, to study the relation between virtual and visceral. I am interested in creating intimacy in a prescribed or clinical environment by drawing parallels between the human body and botany. These themes manifest themselves in different ways such as documentation of an ear reconstructive surgery performed by my father back in Iran, or a recorded FaceTime conversation with my parents around saving a broken cactus with surgical techniques.
Julie Yunhee Moon: As a Korean American artist, my work engages with the multiplicity of belonging. My body of work explores sociocultural norms and stereotypes of the Asian American identity and ideas of femininity. By using pop culture tropes such as family sitcoms, tv commercials, and the playground, I am interested in reexamining the construct of home. I am interested in the domestic spaces, the primary place of learning all these myths, identity formation, relationships, and role models. Through archives and collaborations with my family, I use language and memory as material to explore my Korean American identity.