Heayoung 해용 Jang

As a craft-artist, I consider “everyday rituals” as a multi-dimensional– physical, virtual, or metaphorical–space for exploring one’s relationship to the world. I explore the meanings of everyday encounters and consumerism narratives through process-oriented art making practices, including, mixed-media, installation, videography, and culinary performance. My art practice aims to transcend radical self-care to shared rituals that foster connection, unique forms of expression and communication, and a culture of care within a community. As an emerging art therapist, my work critically examines the intersection between the mundane and the therapeutic, connecting the personal lives of art therapists with their professional practice.

“Home, Sweet Home” is an art-based autoethnographic installation crafted using mixed media, incorporating elements such as used coffee filters, artistic narratives and the scores of the process, and videography based on the everyday ritualistic coffee making and drinking. This work examines the interactive and multi-dimensional space of everyday rituals in fostering care and communications. I explore the potential of shifting from conventional art mediums that confine art within a Western-dominated perspective, embracing individual subjective materials, aiming to preserve better accessibility and the art of meaning-making in our daily life. These works of ritual invite you to engage, listen, look, and create our own ritualistic spaces and experiences. For ritual is above all to care for ourselves, a way of being connected to the world.

The interactive art performance “Coffee-Drinking Narratives” is an ongoing mutual dialogue that involves caring and reflecting one’s relationship to the world by sharing and drinking coffee. This research workshop encourages a broader conversation of the dominant discourse of the mental health system, which often centers around pathologization and western scientism by recognizing everyday rituals as unique forms of care, expression, and communication. The interactive wall space fosters an environment where attendees can sip coffee while sharing their narratives in artistic ways, integrated into the exhibition setting.