My name is Michelle Cho and I am a first-generation Korean-American currently enrolled in the MFA program at The University of Pennsylvania. Prior to moving to Philadelphia, I attended the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City and graduated with a BFA in 2019.

*My body began adapting—the skin on my fingers took longer to rupture from knotting the rubber bands, my lungs stretched wider from holding my breath in from wafting scents of ammonia brought by the liquid latex. These slight expansions in bearance carried over and elevated my day-to-day. I was able to peel more onions in the kitchen and hold my breath longer during a swim. Each time the cusp was shifted. My sculptures were tracking something that could not be plateaued, because it was always extending. 

The sculptures solidify Time in the form of Habit. 3 pounds of rubber bands take me 4 hours to coil and 2 days for my fingers to recover in return to make more. The curing of latex and the healing of skin (from knotting rubber bands) reverts me to count Time as minutes and days instead of piles and strands. Repetition exists in my sculptures not as a practice to multiply but as a transition to enlarge a single form. My acts of repetition are a practice of condensing space, which compromise spatial expansion. The accumulation is not spread out but packaged and concealed, allowing them to seem transportable. 

By actively feeling my body in the process of making, I was able to keep track of Time. The study of my body is important because in the act of sculpting, it is my dead skin particles that are sticking to the rubber, my hair follicles that are fusing to the latex adhesive and so on. Once I began viewing my body’s presence with the sculptures, I was reminded of a Korean comfort woman from a book I was reading the previous night. The sculptures are almost studies of this wrong and inappropriate ability to freely explore sex and sexuality as a Korean-American female with the syncopated history of comfort women.  

This brought me to explore how history is being passed over from Koreans to Korean-Americans. The separation of land creates a definite off-beat of transferred  information that adds to the disattachment. Only having visited Korea once, practicing robotic acts of custom, shown by my mother, forced me to practice a culture on foreign land. Marking space through the act of performing customs created boundaries that signified difference. I found myself creating sculptures that resembled containers and orbs to fill space temporarily. 

The sculptures are influenced by the composition of the surrounding space. Light changes the appearance (the piece darkens with the introduction of light and heat) as well as the scent (the final cure of latex exudes a scent that is reminiscent of body odor) of the rubber sculptures. Jobs that are easily accessible to immigrants are works of manual labor. Light and heat prompts the sculptures to mimic the symptoms from labor in the sunlight. 

I see my sculptures going further to explore repetition as a form of protection and concealment. The semi-translucent nature of latex acts as a veil that parallels the outside peering into customs that mark difference.

110 days, latex, fluorescent lights, bent 10 ft. latex roll, 2019

Emulating putting light up against skin. Fluorescent lights are tightly wrapped in a single 11 foot latex sheet. The piece is turned on at 4am and powered off at 5pm (paralleling the working times of South Korean Rice Farmers). The folds in the latex sheet mimic the physicality of veins. When the latex is cured under high temperatures of heat, it darkens in tone. It takes 110 days of the piece being activated to reach maximum opacity (the same amount of time for rice to be harvested). This piece is customizable and can just be presented as a stand in sculpture.

Inflatable 2, rubber bands, plastic, air, 9ft diameter, 206 lbs, 2019

The thick nature of the plastic inflatable allows the sculpture to be rolled without penetration.

Comfort, rubber bands, steel, 200 lbs, diameter is customizable, 2020

200 pounds of hand-coiled rubberbands lie inside a mirrored steel tube basin.

Dryer study, latex, dryer, tubing, window, dimensions variable, 2021

At-home studio sculpture: Steel pipe is connected to the dryer vent emitting hot air from the turned-on dryer. The pipe emitting warm air is being released to the window on the opposite side of the room. Created amidst the pandemic, I have been critical about domestic spaces, utility bills, etc. The penetrating latex balloon possibly represents bodies cohabitating, existing, and breathing the same air. The balloon is pumped with an air pumper that is dependent on the electricity of the apartment. This piece is able for display in a new environment. Like other artists, this is how I am adapting to the pandemic and working in apartment spaces.

Previously to the pandemic, I was working inside a large garage. After enrolling in the MFA program at The University of Pennsylvania, I was looking forward to using the studio space and facilities prepared by the school. Due to higher education institutions closing in general, I am now working out of a car and my apartment.