Today we’d like to introduce you to Claudia Yeejae Kim.
Hi Claudia Yeejae, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Hi, my name is Claudia or YeeJae Kim. I was born and raised in South Korea. I grew up in an environment where colorism and beauty standards are rampant. I was born with a darker complexion than average Koreans– and such a complexion was and still is less desirable, especially for a woman. My grandmother took me to a public bathhouse and intensively exfoliated my body with her superstitious notion that it would make my skin fair and desirable. On top of it, having a plastic surgeon father has become a big addition to my concept of beauty. The idea of beauty I have formed throughout time fed off internalized colorism and sexism and white supremacy in a broader lens. Since I moved to the United States for higher education, I gradually became aware of my identity. I was often being othered, exotified, and even fetishized. Amid the pandemic, I became a victim of a hate crime because of my racial background. Instead of feeling angry, uncomfortable, and defeated, I redirected my energy to get inspired and express through art-making. Through my art practice, I explore seemingly contradictory realities in which I am defined and harmed through the perspective of the west and American men that exotify and fetishize me as well as Koreans who define me with my skin complexities.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
When I lived in Korea until I was nineteen, people would non-stop giving me unsolicited comments about my complexities. People from my own culture were telling me I looked “exotic” and that I looked like I’m from somewhere else. “You would have looked prettier if you had fair skin” “Which is gonna desire you and marry you if your skin is that dark?” “Put some whitening cream on your face and body– you know it works.” These are something that I would hear from my family and cousins whenever we have gatherings. My complexities, my skin felt too problematic– it stood out; I felt undesirable. I struggled with internalized colorism/oppression for most of my life. It took me a while to figure out that it was not about my complexities but it was about Korean’s viewpoint on beauty standards. I believe that getting out of homogenous society and moving to heterogenous/diverse society helped me to learn that beauty is not monolith.
On the other hand, as a foreigner from an opposite side of the globe from America, I was, again, othered. A white male United States Customs and Borders officer, after noticing I was re-entering the country on a student visa, asked me, “Are you interested in studying American men?” I was appalled. He knew nothing, zero, nada, pertaining to my true interests. To that man, I was nothing more than a small, meek, cordial Asian woman who came all the way from South Korea to meet her future American husband, get her green card; a modern-day comfort woman. I could have told him he was being inappropriate; however, I was all too cognizant of his potential exertion of power over my re-entry. A few months later, still processing the moment, I decided to take him up on his suggestion to study American men for my art practice. I use online dating applications to explore and research racial fetish and stereotypes, racism, and xenophobia. A disturbing image presented itself as my online personas became situations for the projection of racist and misogynistic desires.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work aims to invite viewers into traumatic and disturbing spaces that come from deeply personal but relatable experiences. I consider my art practice interdisciplinary; I am mainly invested in the process of designing, creating, and organizing costumes, props, objects, and sculptures to create immersive, theatrical sets for my performances.
I have a series of works that explores racial fetishes, stereotypes, and xenophobia, specifically on dating apps. When using these apps, I adopted two personas–a docile, fresh-off-the-boat, “generically Asian” woman and a westernized, goth, “Asian feminist”– to shape my conversations with white American men. A disturbing image presented itself as my online personas became situations for the projection of racist and misogynistic desires. What gets revealed in these conversations becomes the source material for photo-based installations, sculptures, and performances.
Also, I have been exploring my experiences of growing up with colorism in Korea. There were constant attempts of whitening and erasing my body. I have vivid childhood memories of my grandmother applying a body mask that contained milk, yogurt, honey, and egg to exfoliate my skin with a loofah at the public bathhouse in a small town in Busan, Korea. Adults at the bathhouse often stared at my body and told me I should constantly exfoliate to make my skin “lighter” and “cleaner.” I grew up condoning and continuing this treatment of my skin.
In 목욕탕 (Mogyoktang), I become a monstrous loofah, the very thing that caused me injury, in an attempt to hold the power and to heal myself and resolve my trauma. I constructed a ceramic-tiled shower booth as the victim of violence. I imagine my body as this shower booth wall that needs to be scrubbed clean. The tiles are like my skin, varying in tone throughout. I remove scabs and lumps using my hands covered with loofah. The tiles on the base have an angry red color, embodying my abraded, flushed skin. As I push and squeeze green ooze out of the scabs, I literally and metaphorically remove the colorism from my body.
I seek to act out alternative realities that are different from what I have experienced as an Asian woman, providing a way to deconstruct power structures, challenge social stigmas, and tackle white supremacy. This also allows me to put others in my position and let them feel my anger and discomfort.
Contact Info:
- Website: yeejaekim.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mynameisnot_yee/
