A Home

The most fundamental aspect of Korean culture is rice. Accordingly, an important item in our country is what provides food for the family - a rice cooker. It is a tradition to put a rice cooker into a new house in order to bring the family prosperity and health. Not only is a rice cooker responsible for producing and sharing the food but it also represents the economical and social status of the family. Throughout centuries of the Korean tradition, by simply observing the type of rice cooker, the amount of rice, and the grain of rice inside the cooker, you might be able to grasp an idea of what the living standards of the family are.

Today, there is a group of children in South Korea who are children of inmates. Due to the misjudgment that the parent’s crime follows the child, many of these children and their harsh environments do not get enough exposure. Many of the children are left behind by their parents and end up in a corrupt household without proper care. To bring awareness to the living standards of these children, I attempted to portray my artwork through the concept of food. In all cultures around the world, the act of sharing food represents one’s care and brings people together, especially within a family. However, in the prisoners’ children’s case, they do not have their mother with them nor a warm family to adequately feed them.

To demonstrate a contrast between an average household and a household the children of inmates might be living in, I took on an absurd way to depict the inside of a rice cooker. From the outside, the rice cookers seem to look different simply based on their technology. However, once the rice cooker is broken apart and looked into, you can see the parallel difference in the rice grain and the objects placed into the rice mold. The objects include daily necessities we can find within our home such as culinary tools, snacks, toys, electronics, etc. By using key components - things we might take for granted - in our daily life to demonstrate one’s lifestyle, I hope to raise awareness of the contrasting poor living conditions that the prisoner’s children might be in.