Julia Yoo

My work examines the intricacies of navigating the western world's othering of racialized bodies. The perpetual foreigner syndrome is something many people of colour experience in North America, where they are viewed as foreigners no matter how long they’ve been established in the country: assumptions are based in racism and xenophobia. Using photos from my mother’s trip to India in the 90s, I overlay photos of myself similarly positioned, and as more photos are overlaid the woman disappears into a jumble of layers. All that’s discernable is what’s behind her, India. I’ve often felt more like the object in a still life painting than a full human. Forced to exist with the pretense of whatever backdrop I’m placed over, which tends to be where my parents immigrated from, my distance from whiteness. These feelings of confusion, dissatisfaction and yearning to know the person in the image but not receiving connection or humanity forces the viewer to infer about the person based on the surroundings given- and imitates my feelings caused by cultural dysphoria.