Translating Life, Death, and Language

Asia Art Archive in America (AAAinA) is excited to present a screening and conversation with artists and filmmakers Kyuri Jeon and Sunny Leerasanthanah on September 19th at 7pm.

Presented together for the first time, Jeon and Leerasanthanah’s recent projects engage in themes of life and death cycles and hone in on the ways language both changes and charges these existential processes. In particular, the featured works highlight the ways language is reinterpreted and/ or disentangled in relation to communication, translation, and cultural production. Jeon will be sharing her 2020 film, Born, Unborn, and Born Again and Leerasanthanah will share an excerpt from their 2021 project, Wuthichai (Exit Interview).

The combined screenings will last approximately 30 minutes. After the screening the two artists will be joined in a conversation moderated by AAAinA’s Manager of Programs and Collections Claire Kim.

Participant Bios:

Kyuri Jeon is a South Korean artist and filmmaker based in New York. Jeon works with video, essay, drawing, and installation to explore time, vision, and its implications for the future. Through the lens of intersectionality, she questions ongoing transnational discussions about identity, feminism, decolonization, and cultural translation. Jeon’s work has been featured internationally at MassArt Art Museum, Boston; Mimosa House, London; Konsthall C, Stockholm; Artists’ Moving Image Festival, Glasgow; Festival Film Dokumenter, Yogyakarta; Women Make Waves, Taipei; and DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, Seoul. She is a recipient of a Contemporary Visual Art Award at AHL-T&W Foundation and an award winner at the Asian Shorts Competition at Seoul International Women’s Film Festival. Jeon holds BFA from Korea National University of Arts and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and Seoul National University.

Sunny Leerasanthanah (b. Bangkok, Thailand) observes how notions of time, place, identity, loss, and affinity are embodied, especially via slippage, repetition, liminality, and limitations. Past and ongoing works include prompting strangers to roleplay and hold conversation in character; inviting people to express the collective imaginary on various topics through sketching and speech; examining narratives around immigration within the context of U.S. invasive species policy; documenting sand patterns created by foraging crabs; mining and rearranging archival video footage; binding perishable paper; and studying iconography in souvenir fridge magnets.

Sunny works expansively across moving images, photographs, installation, performance, books, and prints. Most recently, they shared new bodies of work in solo shows This is as far as I can take you at Smack Mellon, NY (2024) and Naturalization at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, WI (2023). They are a recipient of the Artists Alliance Inc. LES Studio Program (2024), Center for Book Arts Residency (2023), Image Text Workshop Residency (2023), Fire Island Artist Residency (2022), and Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant (2021). They have exhibited at SculptureCenter (NY), Lubov (Projects) (NY), Local Project Art Space (NY), and Handwerker Gallery (NY), among other spaces.

Film Details

Title: Born, Unborn, and Born Again
Year: 2020
HD video, color, B/W, sound
12:38 minutes
Written, directed, and edited by Kyuri Jeon. Titles, Captions: Collective Text. Sound designer Michael Bailey.
This film was funded by The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation.

Title: Wuthichai (Exit Interview)
Year: 2021
Two-channel HD video, color, sound
48:11 minutes (excerpt presented in the AAAinA program will run 11:45 minutes)
Written, directed, and edited by Sunny Leerasanthanah. Titles, Captions: Sunny Leerasanthanah. Actors: Phupiriya Chakkaphark, Spike Fazzalari, Pakapong Phiewkham, Sorawat Ruangamporn, and Watson Sriboonwong. Camera Operator, Assisting Script Editor: Sorn Bunnag. Sound Mixer, Lighting: Dan Fethke.
This film was made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Light refreshments will be provided.

AAAinA’s general programming and operations are funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, Ruth Foundation, and the Vilcek Foundation.

Host or Publisher Asia Art Archive in America