Statement

During my residency in Korea, I got to meet and talk with some illegal Vietnamese migrant workers. Their stories left me with queries and concerns. Following the instructions from a job searching page on Facebook, I went to a workplace located in a mountainous area in North-Eastern Korea. I spent seven days living and working as a farmer alongside the illegal migrant workers from Vietnam and Thailand. We harvested and processed chilies, apples, red beans, black beans, soybeans and ginseng. This process provided me with further insights into these workers’ living conditions, their relationships, the stratification, and how the labor system was operated and maintained.

In this series, I collected produce that originates from Vietnam and Korea, labeling each type with either VN or KR and packing them. This process alludes to how humans are identified, categorized, and controlled in the context of global political migration.