In her solo exhibition, Between Too Late and Too Early, on the Museum of Modern Artwork North Miami, Andrea Chung presents a robust investigation of motherhood, the Atlantic slave commerce and the legacies of commerce and labour. Drawing inspiration from these histories and her personal Chinese language, Jamaican and Trinidadian heritage, Chung makes use of her follow to know the previous whereas imagining new futures, together with the Afrofuturist notion of Drexciya, an underwater world crammed with youngsters saved from enslavement by their moms who threw them overboard.
Between Too Late and Too Early showcases a number of our bodies of Chung’s work, together with collages on paper constituted of birthing cloths, lithographs and cyanotypes. The present additionally encompasses a site-specific set up consisting of bottles fabricated from sugar, an ephemeral materials that’s melting over the course of the exhibition. Talking from a makeshift studio in Miami the place she was cooking the final of the sugar to complete this work, Chung mentioned her imaginative and prescient for the present and her hopes for viewers’ experiences.
Between Too Late and Too Early showcases a number of our bodies of Chung’s work, together with collages on paper constituted of birthing cloths, lithographs and cyanotypes
Zachary Balber
The Artwork Newspaper: How did you provide you with the title Between Too Late and Too Early?
Andrea Chung: It’s a quote from an essay by Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”, about Venus as a picture of the enslaved lady and her presence within the narrative of the slave commerce. I’ve been serious about breaking time and the way Black folks transfer in an area that may’t at all times be outlined by time. A first-rate instance is the Black vernacular of using the phrase “be”, which might be previous, current and future, as in: “Who be consuming cookies? Cookie Monster be consuming cookies.” There’s time that you must be a part of that tradition to know the time and context. I assumed that Saidiya’s quote higher articulated that.
The present consists of installations constituted of sugar. How did you begin utilizing sugar?
I first began utilizing sugar in grad faculty round 2007. I’d began off as a painter and made portraits of my household to attempt to perceive why they ended up in Jamaica from China. Chung wasn’t a standard title within the Caribbean again then. Plenty of meals that had been dropped at the Caribbean to feed enslaved folks—mango and coconut—usually are not native to the realm and are filled with sugar. Diabetes runs in my household, and my grandmother died getting her second leg amputated from gangrene. It felt like the fitting materials to inform the story of my household in that area.
The present consists of The Wailing Room (2024), a piece consisting of bottles fabricated from sugar that comprise apology notes from moms who dedicated infanticide moderately than see their youngsters develop into slaves
Zachary Balber
The present encompasses a new, site-specific fee, The Wailing Room (2024), consisting of bottles fabricated from sugar. How did you develop it?
It reimagines an older bottle work I did that appears at Mauritius, a former sugar colony within the Indian Ocean. I used to be fascinated with a few of their commerce dying out. With these works, I’m contemplating Drexciya and moms who dedicated infanticide on slave ships as a substitute of giving beginning to lives that may be enslaved. For this iteration, I added apology notes from the moms to their youngsters contained in the bottles to get viewers to consider what would trigger a mom to need to make that call.
That’s actually heartbreaking and well timed.
I didn’t intend for the venture to be within the backdrop of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, however I need folks to consider the desperation of the choice. What would trigger a mom to throw herself or her youngster overboard? Plenty of enslaved girls had been charged with homicide, but when they’re not legally seen as a human being, how can or not it’s homicide? It was seen as destruction of property. If something, it was mercy.
The sugar will soften over the course of the present. Is it onerous to surrender management of the supplies?
I needed to lean into the lack of management. It’s the identical with the cyanotypes, just like the immersive set up that feels such as you’re underwater. I can attempt to plan as finest I can for the picture to return out, however I’ve to embrace what the fabric itself does. Cyanotypes will fade and might be introduced again, however even when there’s no picture seen, the picture remains to be there. Its historical past remains to be there, and it’s nonetheless within the sugar when it melts.
With sugar, I’m drawn to the ephemerality of the fabric and that the work has its personal lifespan, so it may possibly’t be commodified. I really feel unusual making one thing extraordinarily private or speaking about trauma, after which considering that it may go up for public sale or be purchased and resold.
Did you write the notes contained in the bottles, or are they from different sources?
I wrote some, however others are from Beloved by Toni Morrison, which was primarily based on the true story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved lady who killed her youngster to avoid wasting her from enslavement. I additionally used historic texts on Margaret from newspaper experiences on the incident. The set up is heavy with emotion. There’s additionally a sound element that switches from laughing to crying and you’ll’t discern which it’s. Somebody requested how I could make this work and never develop into depressed, however I don’t really feel disgrace in what another person pressured us to do.
Andrea Chung: Between Too Late and Too Early, Museum of Modern Artwork North Miami, till 6 April 2025
