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Images courtesy of Tyler Park Presents

Andrea Chung (b. 1978, Newark, NJ) lives and works in San Diego, California. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design, New York, and a MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Her recent biennale and museum exhibitions include the Addison Museum of American Art, Prospect 4, New Orleans and the Jamaican Biennale, Kingston, Jamaica, as well as the Chinese American Museum and California African American Museum in Los Angeles, and the San Diego Art Institute. In 2017, her first solo museum exhibition took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, You broke the ocean in half to be here. She has participated in national and international residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, McColl Center for Visual Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been written about in the Artfile Magazine, New Orleans Times, Picayune, Artnet, The Los Angeles Times, and International Review of African-American Art among others. Her work is included in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, NoVo Foundation, Cleveland Clinic Art & Medicine Institute, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Davis Museum at Wesley College, and the Addison Museum of American Art.

Courtesy of Tyler Park Presents

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Through a variety of different mediums, Chung’s researched-based practice explores labor and materials in their relationship to post-colonial countries, the body, and migration involving perishable and precious materials with strong underlying histories. For the Colostrum series, Chung was interested in the exploitation of Black breast milk throughout history and how it continues still today. Black women were often used as wet nurses for white mothers and within the last decade Black breast milk was used to supply milk banks and then mothers were given Bromocripitine to dry up their breast milk, leaving none for their own babies.

Each piece in this series depicts ethnographic photographs of bare chested mothers and children collaged within a plethora of flora, beads, and pins. In both her previous and current series, Chung surrounds the figures present in the work with a protective barrier through the use of Nkisi, driving pins into a figure to give them power or protection and various color beads associated with Orishas that protect women. Furthermore, the breasts of the women and mouths of the infants are beaded with rhinestones, forming a protective barrier in relationship to their exploitation as subjects in the ethnographic images and the healthcare system that Black and Brown women encounter today.