This poster explores my complicated Korean identity. My mother was adopted from South Korea as an infant. As a result, she has always had many unanswered questions about her birth mother and about why she is the way she is. When it comes to me, I have similar questions about myself. I wanted to create a piece that shows how all of our identities are tied together in a beautiful, yet not crystal clear way.
I started with a white charcoal sketch on gray paper. These flowers are delicate and purposely a little translucent looking. Then, I layered this with photos of wispy smoke. I added thin black lines to “thread” the all of the components of the poster together.
Lastly, I added three Korean phrases on top. Translated, they mean, “Who are you?,” “Who is she?,” and “Who am I?”. These questions reference my grandmother, my mother, and myself, in that order. The I used the font in three different weights - vertically descending from bold, to regular, to light. The varying weights represent how each time a new generation is born, a little bit of the original family identity is lost. I made the text a dark maroon; in this instance, it’s a color that represents familial blood.
