Cortex (2022)

My final project for my Advanced Projects class while attending the University of California, Irvine. For this class, we were challenged to create a project, half of it would be done in a medium we were familiar with, and the other half with a medium we had not worked with before. For my familiar medium, I chose to do video. I had previously taken performance classes wherein we would make videos where we would display our recorded performances. In my videos I would often utilize different editing techniques, and I felt like I could put those skills to good use. For my other medium, I decided to challenge myself with sculpture, specifically using metal and wire.
This project is an ode to my grandfather, now passed. The name "Cortex" held many different meanings for me. The main one was alluding to his condition, his rapid onset of dementia that was ever prevalent in his brain. This led to internal turmoil; I processed it with this piece. My grandfather was my shining light growing up. He and my grandmother were essentially my second set of parents. I would spend most of my time at their house while my parents were at work, from birth to eighth grade. Their quaint, 60's style house was my cozy sanctuary; I would explore all the different rooms and see where my mother and her siblings grew up. I had a collection of toys, puzzles, trains, and various other trinkets I would play with. I would unload a huge pail of marbles onto the floor, and my grandfather would use his key to draw a circle to play with the marbles as if he was making an imprint in the sand. What I remembered most was his large puppetry workshop. He had an entire room dedicated to his craft of puppetry, and his history with the medium was extensive. He sought to revive ancient, traditional stories in his home country of Korea through his puppet shows and eventually started the first puppetry broadcasting company in Korea. He traveled the world, and even in his later years as my grandfather, he took great pride in throwing me and the other children puppet shows at family gatherings.
Cortex refers to this multi-faceted knot existing within me, my grandfather, our family, our ancestry, our love of art, and the coping of loss.