Anicka Yi
Artist, GYOPO Board of Directors
Dear GYOPO Community,
Can we talk about love in a time that is especially heightened by a sense of lovelessness? Our society is pretty cynical about love as a transformative force; we believe that “true, attainable” love cannot be found, even though we have no shared definition of it. We rarely think of love as a humble, responsible choice, a practice that we can cultivate and teach everyone. In her treatise on the subject, All About Love, bell hooks defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action.” Love is a doing, rather than a possessing.
GYOPO is an organization that centers a generative ethic of love, the most vital practice for social relations. To endeavor to build a community where so many of us come from a legacy of struggle, conflicted identity, and class, gender, and racial discrimination is an act of love which must be at the core for the health of any society. We can come together with our differences and likenesses, but ultimately when we alchemically rinse our joy and suffering collectively, somehow the Self just washes away. In those moments, there exists little difference between you and me. We have tapped into reality on a deeper level, one where we are all interconnected—biologically, cosmologically, and consciously. We are simply one.
When I was growing up, there was no safe space, no forum for reflecting on the dissonance of living between cultures and expectations. I barely had any language for being caught between worlds. Through my work, both artistic and personal, I have come to know that belonging is not a singular static construct, but an evolving dialogue between self and the world. Since GYOPO began its work in 2016, it has formed new relationships and enriched existing ones between brilliant, inventive people within the Korean diaspora and beyond. Together, we are capable of facing uncertainty and fears of radical change by creating small links that create a vast network of community healing and endurance.
Through the organization of educational programs on the arts and events that offer new experiences of belonging, GYOPO breaks entrenched ways of relating to one another and offers a space to renegotiate our relationships to family, community, and power. It is this kind of expansive, educational, and intersectional work—such as their breakthrough virtual program series, Racism Is a Public Health Issue, co-presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2020, in which I participated alongside Jeff Chang, Bowen Yang, Cathy Park Hong, Ava DuVernay, Rashid Johnson, Dolores Huerta, among others—that is vital to diasporic Korean and other communities. In addition to contributing Shigenobu Twilight, the annual GYOPO artist edition I designed in 2019, I have been a proud member of GYOPO’s board of directors since 2022.
Recently, I opened my most comprehensive museum exhibition in Asia, at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, titled There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One, and last year I launched a nomadic research initiative called Metaspore. We incubated the first chapter titled “The Networked Sensorium” in the Bay Area, culminating in a sensorial, interdisciplinary symposium. These recent activities draw a circle around the Pacific Rim, connecting my place of upbringing, California, to my place of birth, Korea. While in Korea, I learned about jeong, a concept which describes a complex bond of love and affection between people and things who have deep affinities for one another. It seemed that there were many signs of love’s multi-dimensional, directional potential everywhere I went in Korea. I find this ethos carries over to the Americas, where GYOPO’s work flourishes.
We are now awakening to the need for a paradigm shift in our society, where interconnectedness, interdependence, and collectivity eclipse self-centered individualism. Economists have been calling the 21st century the “Pacific Century,” where cultural and economic influence will be heavily concentrated in the Asia Pacific region. It is up to us and organizations such as GYOPO to develop new models of community building. GYOPO uplifts and collaborates with some of the most renowned, established artists as well as emerging, experimental creative thinkers and practitioners. As opposed to engendering competition and promoting individual success, GYOPO is dedicated to generative and emancipatory practices of reciprocity and exchange.
We must start with love, even in the realm of scientific inquiry. Science can point to phenomena, but it cannot teach you how to live it. Love can function like the underground fungal networks that enable a whole forest ecosystem to thrive. With your support, GYOPO will continue to be a space of learning, experimentation, belonging, and empowerment from which ideas are incubated and disseminated to audiences. We are in need of more such practices of abundant love.
In community with love,
Anicka Yi
Artist, GYOPO Board of Directors
Image: Na Mira, Anicka Yi, and EJ Hill at GYOPO’s 2019 Chuseok Benefit
Photo: Sara Pooley
For much of my life, I had a somewhat conflicted relationship with my Korean American identity, feeling simultaneously hypervisible as an Other in the predominantly white communities I grew up in on the East Coast and invisible as a Korean American because I didn’t quite fit in with those who were defining Korean-ness in my life. It took me a long time to realize that I am exactly Korean enough, that there is no litmus test that can prove or disprove my Koreanness. Moving to Los Angeles was a reset in many ways, including in my relationship with my Korean American identity.
I followed GYOPO while living in New York, so as soon as I got settled here I immediately reached out to volunteer– I knew this was a group I wanted to be a part of. I was welcomed into the GYOPO community quickly and immediately felt seen and valued for my unique story and skill sets. The programs that GYOPO organizes are impressive and far-reaching, but what I couldn’t understand from afar was how much being a part of this community (first as a volunteer, then as interim Programs Committee Co-Chair, and now as a Steering Committee member) would enrich my life. My favorite moments have been the small ones where relationships are built and strengthened– sharing the first bowl of naengmyun of the summer with fellow volunteers, a walk on the beach with panelists from Korea after our discussion on alternative art spaces, drinks with activists fighting for peace on the Korean peninsula, and watching fellow GYOPO volunteers play with my children at a gathering in my home.
Being a part of GYOPO has shown me that my personal Korean American experience is as equal and valid as anyone else’s– it is but one strand in the larger and continuously evolving fabric of diasporic Korean identity.
I believe ethnic affinity groups such as GYOPO are their best when they use their own specific histories and experiences to weave into larger global movements against white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. By examining the work of Korean cultural producers, GYOPO provides a platform for discussions that connect us to these larger issues. For example, a screening of the documentary Crossings shed light on how the ongoing Korean War birthed the modern US military industrial complex; a discussion with Grace M. Cho, author of Tastes Like War, made visible the layered experiences of mixed race Koreans; a recent panel discussion examined how Asian American artists are using cuteness in their practices to both challenge and challenge gendered racial stereotypes; and several GYOPO volunteers, including myself, were asked to reflect on a piece from The Space Between at LACMA, a special opportunity for us to present multiple entry points into this landmark exhibition of modern Korean art. GYOPO is co-organizing a day of programming at the Hammer Museum, which will provide insight and context into Only The Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, exploring the impact of social and political conditions on cultural production at that time and drawing connections to the work of diasporic Korean artists today. Through our programming and community building, we make our identity richer and more inclusive, resisting the nationalism, queerphobia, and ethnic essentialism that has excluded and marginalized various members of the Korean diaspora.
While it is heartening to see Korean culture trend globally right now, it should also make us pause to consider who is deciding how and to whom we are visible. GYOPO works hard to earn foundation and government grants, but it is imperative that we continue to raise funds at a grassroots level from individual supporters such as yourself. Your tax deductible contributions give us the freedom and agency to evolve and explore exciting new ways to fulfill our mission. With your help, we do not need and will not wait for a brief moment in the spotlight; we will continue to be emphatically and wholly seen by each other, enriching and expanding both the GYOPO community and ourselves.
Alex Paik
Steering Committee and Program committee co-chair, GYOPO
Founder and Director, Tiger Strikes Asteroid
KISSSSS by Yong Soon Min
Curated by Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D.
In collaboration with Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA)
Oct. 5-Dec. 14, 2024
Memorial for Yong Soon Min: Saturday, Oct. 5, 12-2 p.m.
Opening Reception: Saturday, Oct. 5, 2-6 p.m.
Contemporary Arts Center Gallery
Throughout her career, Yong Soon Min examined the impact of the Korean War (1950–present), particularly the ongoing division between North and South Korea at the 38th parallel. KISSSSS (2024) explores how the entangled geopolitical relations between North and South Korea, China, the Soviet Union, United Nations, and United States created this liminal space known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Although KISSSSS remains unfinished, the installation includes conceptual elements and photographs from a photo shoot the artist oversaw shortly before her passing.
Two other works featured in this exhibition, Both Sides Now (2018) and Still/Incessant (2018/2024), reflect Min’s continued interest in the DMZ from different perspectives. Both Sides Now are prints of collages that Min created with postcards purchased during her travels to the Joint Security Area in South Korea and North Korea in the 1990s. She spliced and reassembled the postcards to show alternating depictions of both nations simultaneously. Still/Incessant features a mural sized print of a collage at the back of the gallery. The large-scale format situates viewers in the room where the armistice that established the DMZ was signed in 1953, and emphasizes the ongoing impact of the historical event. This image is also the subject of the Still/Incessant (book) which is Min’s last finished artwork.
Artist, activist, educator, and curator Yong Soon Min joined the Department of Art faculty at UC Irvine in 1993 and became Professor Emerita in 2014. After earning her BA, MA, and MFA degrees in art at UC Berkeley, she moved to New York. There, she became a key figure in the emerging Asian American art community during the 1980s and ‘90s, and participated in Godzilla: Asian American Art Network and the Asian American Arts Alliance. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally. Min died from breast cancer on March 12, 2024, at her home in Los Angeles in the company of family and friends.
This installation is co-sponsored by the UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art and the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts with lead support generously provided by the Center for Critical Korean Studies and Claire Trevor Society.
Image: Yong Soon Min, Image from KISSSSS. Photograph by David Kelley, 2024
Ten years ago, I bought myself a titanium ring that was only 5000 Korean won from a street stall in the Hongdae neighborhood of Seoul. While it felt like a silly and spontaneous purchase, it symbolized a new start for me—a naive teenager who would miss every bit of Korea. When I asked the seller to engrave my name on it, he added a heart at the end. I hated it; it felt cheesy. Now I think of it as a sign of how much love I should have for myself, and for the unsettling feelings I would have to live with as an immigrant for the next decade or so.
Some might use the labels 1.5 or 1.75 generation, but I see myself as an immigrant. I take pride in being a Korean national in a foreign place. As a Korean who knows how to write a full name in Hanja and even sips with her head turned away from elders as an engrained drinking habit, maintaining these behaviors never felt like a part of the solution to the anxiety around my immigration. I was feeling lonely and confused during my undergrad program in Fine Art at UCLA, and questioning my place in the art world when I found GYOPO. From the moment I spoke to Ellie Lee on the door steps of the volunteer exhibition at Otra Vox, I was captivated by GYOPO as a community that offers security, assurance, love, respect and a space to grow without the pressure that comes with being a Korean artist in a foreign place.
Until recently, my definition of gyopo was a stiff dictionary definition. Gyopo meant someone born outside of Korea, but with Korean heritage. It was never me, nor did I ever think it ever would be. I knew what it meant to be Korean, but not gyopo. In a way, I was afraid that being a gyopo meant not being Korean enough. During the past several months as GYOPO’s administrative assistant, I have received unfathomable love and care. The support and encouragement of this community has allowed me to embrace my identity and all that it represents, including my passion for art. They were the ones who hugged me without any words, and understood my work beyond the frame of “identity art.” I’ve been waiting for that hug, the hug that would allow me to see myself as a gyopo.
Through open and honest conversations with GYOPO members and attending our many programs and events that are driven by a desire to understand what our common ground is, I came to realize that being a gyopo means so much more than just having shared heritage. It is about migration, navigating multiple cultures and identities, and finding a sense of belonging within a society that may not always fully understand or appreciate our experiences. GYOPO is built upon the stories and experiences of Koreans. Whether our immigration was driven by economic opportunity, conflict, persecution, family reunification, or for education, it is a beautiful and complex tapestry, woven together by the threads of hope, resilience, and determination. Our stories are of pain and struggle, heartache and loss. Our journeys are marked by challenges and obstacles, by moments of doubt and fear. Our families face the unknown with courage and bravery.
I finally found a reason to call Los Angeles my home and myself a gyopo. I am overcoming the fear of being a stranger in a place where I know I deserve to belong to, or at least I’ve paid dearly for. I can take up space now. I own and cherish my unsettled feelings as an immigrant now that I know it is a part of a larger, shared experience—just like how I gave myself a red and blue tattoo on the finger that I used to wear that silly titanium ring on. Being of the Korean diaspora is a part of my story now. It is not because of the global K-Wave, or mukbang becoming a household word, but the community that has allowed me to take up space within a collective. A community that understands both the beauty and pain of our experiences, as well as one that supports the arts without perpetuating the cliches and stereotypes of being a Korean artist outside of Korea.
Thank you for being a part of GYOPO. Thank you for listening to my story and sharing yours. I am beyond excited for what 2023 will bring our blooming organization. With your continued support, GYOPO can continue to provide a home for us where we nurture the warmth and hope that we carry for each other. With your contribution, GYOPO can continue to promote understanding and appreciation for the multitudes of experiences and perspectives we hold, through art, discourse, and community building. GYOPO has carved out a space for us, and it requires our collective participation and support for the organization to thrive. I look forward to continuing to build and grow with all of you, and most importantly, to create the world that I wished for ten years ago.
With love and respect,
Ji Hyun Lee
In the midst of a pandemic, we continue to expand dialogue, support and acknowledge one another and maintain meaningful connections with each other. As our organization continues to evolve, we are determined to sustain our focus on GYOPO’s mission to foster the growth and representation of Korean Diasporic artists within our community. In response to an invitation by Otra Vox, we have selected six artists, in various stages of their artistic practice, who reflect the diverse and talented group of cultural workers within our GYOPO volunteer community. Each of the works in this exhibition expresses recurring themes GYOPO discussed and experienced as a collective during the past two years: solitude, beauty in nature, the power of words, and ultimately communion with one another. These artists continue to innovate and thrive in a world that is driven by constant change and survival. By gathering and sharing their work with our larger community, we remind our audience and supporters of the people who make GYOPO possible.
Artists:
Jisoo Chung
Michelle Kim
Roger Kim
Soo Kim
Chung Park
Kayla Tange
The Black Asian Trans Solidarity Power Rally took place at Pershing Square on May 21st, from 4-6pm with speakers Rohan-Zhou Lee (They/Siya/祂 (Tā)), Luckie Alexander (he/him), YK Hong (any pronouns), & Blossom C. Brown (she/her/hers), Lee Painter Kim (they/them) & performances by Xodiak, Mr. Skipps McGee, Spoken Word by Nu’Diamond (she/her), Healing Ceremony led by Jessica Delgado (she/they/ella), & Phillip J. Hurt & a Binder Giveaway & Free HIV Self Test Kits provided by Invisible Men.
There was a Black Asian Trans* Solidarity Town Hall / After Party at NAVEL LA after the rally and march where space was held for BIPOC, trans & gender expansive networking, performances, and celebration, including:
Self-Defense Kit Giveaway by Trans Defense Fund LA
50 free meals cooked by VooDoo Vegan
Drag Performance by Phillip J. Hurt (they/them/she/her)
Performance by Xodiak (all pronouns)
Drag Karaoke hosted by Mr. Skipps McGee (he/him) & Phillip J. Hurt (they/them/she/her)
among other surprises!
Follow @BlasianMarchLA to learn about the next rally!
Saturday, November 4, 2022 | 4:00 – 6:00 PM
mak-’amham
2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94704
The Ssi Ya Gi collective and mak-’amham hosted a private Ohlone and Korean meal in the re-designed Cafe Ohlone space on the UC Berkeley Campus. This event was organized to honor the resilience and wisdom of the elders in our Ohlone and Korean communities and was an opportunity to learn from the experiences shared between them. The meal, cooked by Cafe Ohlone and local Korean American chefs, highlighted two ingredients used in both Ohlone and Korean cooking: acorns (dotori) and fernbrake (gosari). Both cultures utilize these plants in their cooking. Guests listened and shared life experiences related to plants and foods that hold significant resonances in both cultures. Ssi Ya Gi is dedicated to sharing senior immigrant stories about food because the process of listening to and transmitting our elders’ food stories creates opportunities for intergenerational and cross-cultural discoveries.
mak-’amham is an Ohlone cultural institution empowering our community with tradition. mak-’amham teaches the public, through Ohlone cuisine, of its unbroken roots.
Ssi Ya Gi records and amplifies senior immigrant memories about food as a platform to forge intergenerational connections and uncover rich narratives that would otherwise be lost to history.
The Ohlone & Korean Story Sharing Supper is sponsored by GYOPO through the generous grant by KACFSF in the loving memory of Myung Soon “Mary” Kim. Additional support was provided by Jee’s Kimchi, Rice & Cake, Seoul Gom Tang, Namu Farm and Second Generation Seeds, and MÀKKU.
Zines created by collaborators and community members and inspired by the selected stories of Kim Bok Hee, Joanna Selby Kim, Myung Kwang Shik, and Park Dong Shin. Purchase a zine here!
Saturday, June 25 | 6:00 – 7:30 PM
CultivaLA Westlake Community Garden
599 Columbia Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90017
Featuring panelists and collaborators:
Katherine Kim, Koreatown Storytelling Project
Mina Park, Shiku, Baroo
Jose Miguel Ruiz, CultivaLA
Hannah Pae, Ssi Ya Gi, TERREMOTO
Moderated by Ginny Hwang, Jogamdo
Join us to learn more about and participate in an intergenerational project that centers on community empowerment and cultural memory. This day holds special meaning for Koreans in the diaspora because it marks the 72nd anniversary of the Korean War, a still unended conflict that continues to reverberate in and beyond the Peninsula. Food – specific dishes, as well as particular plants and seeds – embodies rich stories of how elders survived the armed conflict and its aftermath, and the memories they hope to share with younger generations. After the panel discussion and during a garden reception, all in attendance are invited to share food memories with GYOPO and Koreatown Storytelling Project volunteers who will be collecting oral histories for the GYOPO x Ssi Ya Gi archive.
Ssi Ya Gi and GYOPO have initiated a long-term collaboration with a first phase which includes collecting oral histories from seniors who live at Saint James Manor, Los Angeles (through a partnership with Koreatown Youth + Community Center), Rose of Sharon and Baywood Apartments in Oakland (through a partnership with the Korean Community Center of the East Bay), and growing and sharing Korean heirloom vegetables (provided by Second Generation Seeds), with the support and partnership of CultivaLA, in their MacArthur Park community garden.
GYOPO is a collective of diaspora Korean cultural producers and arts professionals generating and sharing progressive, critical, intersectional and intergenerational discourses, community alliances, and free educational programs in Los Angeles and beyond. Our programming aids in the expansion and deepening of our collective understanding of Korean diasporic identity.
Ssi Ya Gi records and amplifies senior immigrant memories about food as a platform to forge intergenerational connections and uncover rich narratives that would otherwise be lost to history.
CultivaLA’s mission is to transform healthy food access and wellness through people, social enterprise, and environmental justice.
This program follows a private meal for the elders who shared their stories with us this Spring. Zines created by collaborators and community members and inspired by the selected stories of Choi Mi Ja, Kim Young, Kim Young-Sook, Lee Gil Ja, and Jen Shin. Purchase a zine here!
GYOPO Program Open Call
Deadline: September 1, 2022, 5:00 PM PST
Applicants Notified: October 1, 2022
GYOPO is pleased to announce a Program Proposal Open Call for our upcoming season of free public programming.
Selected applicants will be invited to organize their proposed program with the support of GYOPO’s committees. The GYOPO Program Committee looks forward to reviewing your applications! Get in touch with any questions via email: artgyopo@gmail.com
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