Riddled (텅) Tongue

                                                       +13 sonographies, translucent tracing paper, graphite, “wrong” phonetics, vinyl adhesive tags, instructive annotations in Korean, 2021-2022



Riddled (텅) Tongue 

is created within the evolving creation journey of When the Others Lick Underneath Your Tongue, generating the sound waves into pencil drawings and a body of unsettled phonetic transcriptions. Each phonetic letter is rendered by a mixture of a variation of American phonetic spelling by "native" English speakers and Koreans as English learners. It imagines ticklish insinuation (onto the tip of your tongue👅) of those English alphabets Korean speakers would commonly find troubling to pronounce. Instructive annotations written in Korean register new learners of this phonetic to globally-known (almost mythical sometimes) tips of 'how to improve English fast.' I recall times learning English myself and teaching it to 2nd gen-Korean teens with these tips such as "speak at safe places," "develop your mouth muscle," "be patient," "make new friends and use new voca."

"Speak at safe places" and "make new friends" conflict here.
Although all of the tips might be legitimate and effective,
they are certainly anxiety-inducing at some level.