When an individual fails to live with their given national identity by birth, they can be treated as a cultural traitor. They often have to live through the suppression and containment that are deployed by their family, because of their lack of traditional cultural values. While ideally considered as a ‘nurturing’ space to its children, family often polices one’s true identity, causing nurture to slip into a kind of abuse in the name of their ‘love’.

In ‘In the name of love : 사랑이란 이름으로’,  Son explores the understanding of ‘love’ when an individual fails to perform their national identity given at birth. Using resin, bath scrub towels, video and cellophane, Son creates a shrine-like space, where one’s memories and experience have accumulated since childhood. In this space, Son explores the act of scratching and scrubbing as a form of meditation to rethink and construct one’s identity, as well as a removal of trauma and displacement of familial love. Through this repetitive labour, Son investigates the uniformity that families, the nurturing platforms, may enforce onto individuals, and the transitional line that lies between nurture and abuse. Through the lens of cultural hybridity, Son invites viewers to explore the unsettled senses of belonging in the name of (their) love.

Proudly supported by Yarra City Council, Australia