Nicholas oh

Lives and works in NYC, NY, USA

Artist statement

Working across ceramic sculpture, installation, video, and performance, my practice reflects on my personal relationship to cultural inheritance. As a first-generation Asian-American artist, I examine how ancestral traditions rooted in my Korean heritage can be recontextualized to symbolize East Asian racial politics in the West. I interrogate stolen historical artifacts, such as the moon jar. I trace their current possession in multiple American institutional collections—uncovering and mapping old trade routes— and reclaim their forms in my work. I remake and reposition these objects as markers of diasporic identity formation, embodiments of colonial histories, and critiques of flattening exotifications of indigenous material cultures. I construct reimagined adaptations of stolen historical objects to also serve communities that I find belonging in, thinking of strategies to regenerate these objects for different purposes. This, resulting in functional ware: vessels for fermentation, fountains, urns. Through labor-intensive syncretic processes, I fuse traditional pottery techniques with contemporary ceramic methodologies; I create hybridized objects, simultaneously encapsulating ancient cultural history while also redirecting this history to new, inclusive narratives. Reimagined objects are offerings for filmed and live performances centered on gestures of care, such as funerary rites memorializing victims of hate crimes, community gatherings for exchanging of dreams,...

Artwork