Jean Rho

Artist Statement

The works are a series of contemplations on transcending trauma and its merging of memory and aesthetics. The artist investigates the thread of inter-generational trauma from an Asian-American immigrant perspective. The central themes define narratives, beliefs and practices of broken identity, past, present and future realities, generational ties and transcendent spirit-soul being. Roots and realities surface through the process of mining through personal pain moments along the timeline of the artist’s life. The artist's grandparent's generation lost their property, identity and eldest son. Her parents then grew up in refugee camps during the Korean War. Both generations lived in extreme poverty. Their life and legacy were rooted in an identity of oppression, loss, abuse, poverty and PTSD.

Her parent’s generation then immigrated to the US in the 1970s with nothing and still have nothing but debt and regret. Theirs is a life and legacy of repressed anger, emotional abuse, untreated mental illness, co-dependency, abandonment and neglect. In her own generation, the artist has observed herself living out a legacy of depression, anxiety, attachment issues, codependency, abandonment and an orphan spirit. Inter-generational roots of shame and fear sound common and benign but if we consider the pattern of life choices made with crippling fear and shame at the root, Hope becomes vastly diminished in its capacity to foster positive outcomes. There is now hope that of an identity once mired in confusion, suppression and frustration with fear and shame at the root, is now immigrating towards healing, transformation and renewal.