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2021 Grant Awards

Thread & Needle 

  • Kyuri Jeon
  • 2021 Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander Artists Support Grant
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Prisoners of war with anti-communist slogans tattooed on their arms

The anti-communist slogans which prisoners of war had tattooed on their arms, July 18, 1952. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

MFA alum Kyuri Jeon will produce Thread & Needle a short film that explores how structural violence lingers on collective bodies through the lenses of tattoos. She has spent the past year researching the history of tattoos in South Korea, mainly focusing on the periods before and after the Korean War where it significantly represents trans-national and government control of one’s body as an object of discipline and normalization. Drawing from the fact that contemporary Korean tattoos were developed and introduced to the public by the U.S. Army camps during the 1980s and the largest U.S. overseas military base, Camp Humphreys, is stationed in South Korea. This project is rooted in the relentless and continuing legacies of U.S. imperialism, but explores its entanglement with enforced national identity, fascist dictatorship, and contempt and desire for Western capitalism.

  • 2021
  • 2021 Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander Artists Support
  • Responsive Opportunity

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The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

John McInerney (he/him)
Executive Director
215-573-0874
mcinernj@upenn.edu

Chloe Reison (she/her)
Associate Director
215-573-2159
reison@upenn.edu

Tamara Suber (she/her)
Executive Coordinator of Grants and Community and Equity Strategies
215-898-0608
suber@upenn.edu

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