young min moon

"The Illegal Lives": Art within a community of others

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“The Illegal Lives”: Art within a Community of Others

Rethinking Marxism vol. 21 no. 3 (July 2009)

Reprinted in Badly Flattened Land, 2011

Essay by Young Min Moon

Photographs by Mixrice

http://www.mixterminal.net

Abstract:

Since 2002, Mixrice, the artist collective, has pursued social interventionist activities and

collaborative projects with a group of undocumented Asian migrant workers in South Korea.  Utilizing

photographic and media recordings, comics, murals, and texts in the form of exhibitions, publications,

and the Web, they engage the question of the Other within the context of an ostensibly monoethnic South

Korean culture. Through their critical practice of working with members of a transnational community,

Mixrice probes the issues of human rights and the ethics and roles of the artist in a volatile

sociopolitical environment.

© Photographs Mixrice, all rights reserved,  2008