Visual Poetry Journal
"Today I received the news you are found. They send you three letters, but they remain unanswered.
I don’t know how giving up a child lives on in you physically and mentally. Maybe in the beginning you feel pain, numb, try to feel nothing at all. At a certain point emotions soften, become less sharp and somewhat blurry. This moment in your life becomes just a like second in a minute, then an hour, a year and eventually a decade. Something that can even be forgotten. It maybe pops up every now and then, but it can also be tugged away quicker and more smoothly over time. Have you told your husband and maybe other children, has it become a secret that can neven be unearthed by anyone? This darkness that must be overshadowed by light, so everyone in your surroundings stays blinded. Is it something people should never speak about within the family?
Have these letters awaken past emotions? I think almost every painful experience eventually looses its original impact and becomes tolerable. Maybe for you I have reach the status of tolerable and somewhat uneventful."
Aram Tanis was born in Seoul, but spent his formative years in The Netherlands, where he lived in a predominantly white neighborhood and attended schools that lacked diversity. As a person of Asian descent, he stood out among his parents, relatives, peers, and the media figures he saw on television. During his adolescence, he actively sought individuals who shared his identity but was disappointed to find a dearth of role models. Consequently, he has always been acutely aware of his distinctiveness.
When Aram Tanis visited South Korea twenty years ago he did not speak the language and didn’t know his way in South Korea. In his first work Ji Hyun Song, created in Seoul, he concentrates solely on photographing multi-lane motorways, towering offices and residential high-rises, and vast parking lots. With this work he shows his fascination for this immense city, but also expresses his sense of alienation from contemporary Seoul. Despite his biographical connection to this city, this work emphasizes the disconnection and loss of social bonds with his birth country.
Now, 20 years later South Korea, and in particular Seoul, has become a place of home and familiarity. It is a place where he feels more complete and connected with his Asian roots. The smells, sounds, lights, architecture, people and food have become part of his conscious identity. When he walks the streets and can smell the Bulgogi or the Bibimbap it triggers a sense of happiness. When he is on the subway and hears familiar sounds through the speaker it feels so normal, like it has always been there in his life. The locations where this new work has been created are familiar and are linked to memories created over the last two decades.
For Aram Tanis this notion of 'Feeling at Home’ has always been a complicated one. For him home is connected with his identity. As a child he always wanted to look white. No Asian eyes. No flat nose. Looking white was the answer to his uncertainties. Once Tanis was in Suwon, a city near Seoul. Streets filled with clinics. Plastic surgery is booming business in Korea and Suwon is one of those places to be to erase part of your Asian identity. Once he visited such a clinic and as he walked in he entered a huge waiting room. It looked more like a dining hall. Everywhere were big, round wooden tables. On each table a hand mirror was placed. At one of the tables sat a girl, around 20 years old, looking at herself in the hand mirror. Every little detail in her face she closely inspected. Finally she put the mirror down to pick it up again a few seconds later. This ritual she repeated several times. Observing the whole thing made Tanis feel anxious enough. He changed his mind and walked out of the clinic.
Over time it has become clearer what it means to be Korean to Aram Tanis and as he feels more at home in his own skin he also feels more at home in South Korea. Now that he has become a father himself his Korean identity plays an even bigger role in his personal and work life.
