TITLE: enunciating silence and
ARTIST: Jesse Chun
LOCATION: 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA
DATE: 11.01.2019 - 12.08.2019

  • Jesse Chun, “INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE (II)” 2019. Multi-channel video, airport speaker, 2 minute sound, steel straight bracket, graphite on wall.

  • Jesse Chun, “INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE (II)” 2019. Multi-channel video, airport speaker, 2 minute sound, steel straight bracket, graphite on wall.

  • Jesse Chun “enunciating silence and” 2019. Graphite, silicone, wood, paint, steel trestles, cast from children's alphabet letters. 36 x 80 in. each.

  • Jesse Chun “enunciating silence and” 2019. Graphite, silicone, wood, paint, steel trestles, cast from children's alphabet letters. 36 x 80 in. each (detail)

  • Jesse Chun, “untitled (wrdpwrmdesy)” 2019. Graphite on wall, illegible book pages, legible book pages, aluminum frames with no back, d rings.

  • Jesse Chun, “untitled (wrdpwrmdesy)” 2019. Graphite on wall, illegible book pages, legible book pages, aluminum frames with no back, d rings. (detail)

  • Jesse Chun, “three / tree / ___ “ 2019. Steel number sign.

  • Jesse Chun, “INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE (II)” 2019. Multi-channel video, airport speaker, 2 minute sound, steel straight bracket, graphite on wall.

PRESS RELEASE:

1708 is pleased to present enunciating silence and a solo exhibition of new and recent work by Jesse Chun. Through sculpture, video, sound, and drawing, Chun examines the English language and its power structures through the institutional mechanisms of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), formerly known as ESL (English as a Second Language). Working with various found sources such as EFL/ESL workbooks, youtube pronunciation tutorials, standardized tests, watermarks for diplomas and certificates, and index pages of books on the English language, Chun re-interprets the authority, function, and meaning of the world’s “common language” into a new system of relations.

In the sculptures titled enunciating silence and Chun casts children’s English letter construction toys as tools for disassembling the written language. By using the educational toys incorrectly, she does not build English letters—but instead builds abstract forms that are in between language and form. She manipulates these fixed, English-alphabetic forms into a bodily, flaccid state using silicone and graphite. In voiceless consonants, pronunciation tutorials are fragmented and abstracted into a soundscape—almost silent voices whisper voiceless consonants, layered until they become like waterfalls before fading back into silence. Likewise, works like INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE, a multi-channel video installation, also reflects on the corporeal, emotional, and interior ramifications of the English language’s hegemony and subjugation, particularly on the non-native speaker. 

enunciating silence and establishes new, non-representational semiotic trajectories, which break free from the pre-existing systems of the English language. By examining the world’s lingua franca through its own pedagogical words, Chun constructs material, sonic, and linguistic abstractions that decenter English: situating it as a “point of departure rather than the final destination of a newly configured scene of languaging”. (Rey Chow, Not like a native speaker). Chun considers new poetics and departures for legibility, diaspora, and the untranslatable. 

PROGRAM:

Visiting Artist Lecture: Jesse Chun
Thursday October 31, 2019 at 12:30 PM
Student Commons Theater, 907 Floyd Ave, Richmond, VA
Virginia Commonwealth University, Hosted by VCU, Sculpture + Extended Media Department and 1708 Gallery