Still Present Pasts

Kim Thompson

Performance Art

"To be a Korean woman with the last name “Thompson” is its own complexity. Assumptions are made on every side in regards to my very ethnicity, identity and knowledge.

"By birth and by blood I am South Korean. By environmental culture I was brought up to be a white southern Christian evangelical fundamentalist and by choosing to move overseas just after high school until the age of 27, I was shaped by a mixed hybrid of eastern and western European. . .

"Where do my loyalties lie? In my birthland – Korea – or in the land that raised me – America – or in the land where I felt most at home – Europe? Do I pledge my allegiance to the motherland that birthed me but in effect turned its back on my by leaving me on the doorstep when I was less than 24 hours old and to the whims of the orphanage. Or to a country that took me in – gave me a family and an education and opportunities but did so at the cost of stripping me of my own ethnic identity? Or to countries that I chose to discover that are completely foreign to my own ethnic and environmental roots?

"My work as a visual and performance artist deal with these questions – and I have begun to discover that this has not always been a conscious choice but rather something innate as if the questions demand to be asked whether or not I choose to focus on them or not."