KISS ME IM KOREAN

we gotta make more babies

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I always wanted to make clothes, T-shirts especially. It was more like I wanted to print, paint, and write stuff on them. It felt like sending some secret radio signals out in the open. Just like the signal that Larry Clark sent me and many others through his 1995 film ‘Kids’.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when the guy with the bottom half of him missing jumped on a skateboard and started singing ‘I have no legs’ while shaking a plastic cup with a few coins dancing in it, making some kind of ancient mantra. 

Carriage after carriage, the coins in his plastic cup started to sound like a Jorge Ben song. Breaking out of that linear hypnosis, a cascade of pixelization washed my citizenship off the passport. I could be anywhere I wished, anyone I wanted to be. I was no longer a race. I was just another digit in the world of binary. These safari tabs carried me around the world. Resonating like a WiFi signal and then suddenly taking the D train with Soul Brother No. 1. People were just words on the computer screen. I found my Casablanca. A refuge where I could belong, where I could be no one.

I saw so many Korean flags on social media today. What does it mean to be Korean in 2025? The Korea I left when I was 12 is no more, and I have been back for 12 years. Of course, now there are more than 12 of us. There is more context behind the word ‘Korea’ now than ever before, but also we are running out of us faster than ever before too. I mean, my brother is going to be an Australian soon, married to a Kiwi. I see Black kids running around doing gawi-bawi-bo in Huam-dong. It’s not about stating the fact. It’s a password to a new Casablanca, and everyone is learning the login.

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KISS ME I M KOREAN
2018
Silkscreen T-shirts

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6.0oz. 203g/m²

Cotton 100%