Hannah Kim
Varamini

Kimbap and the Koreas

Kimbap, a Korean food thought to have originated during the Japanese occupation, is composed of a core of colorful vegetables and meat surrounded by rice, bound by a sheet of seaweed. The participatory artwork gathered people at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art on July 21 + 22, 2016 to collaboratively assemble rolls of Kimbap, discuss the histories that this food symbolizes, and eat together: reflecting on the question of what it means to own and ingest history and words. 

A collaborative project with Abigail Han at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. 

Seaweed sheets were inscribed with text written by modern Korean poet Hahm Dong-Seon, who was born in 1930 in the northern part of Japanese-occupied Korea. The partition of the Korean Peninsula in 1945 effectively exiled the poet from his hometown, situated in what is now North Korea.

Tunnel No.3, Hahm Dong Seon (excerpted)

The legacy of the great powers

when they threw the owners out
and took over our living rooms, on the pretext
they were trying to stop the fighting,
they were on our side
lives on in history
as the armistice line the demilitarized zone.

Images courtesy Abigail Han