this place that bears my past doesn’t even know my name is an installation negotiating the desire to live with loss and remain tethered to the past through the intersections and limitations of text, light, and movement. My work listens to, translates, and transcribes voices of my family forming narratives. These voices make connections between the past, present, and future by collapsing time. I’m interested in the things that escape meaning and understanding—silences and negative spaces speak volumes. New relationships between light, movement, and text are formed, creating a space for meditation and speculation. The production and viewing process is a coping mechanism; a display of affection; a place of reflection; an allowance to grieve. I come to terms with the gaps and holes in my family history by filling them in with my own truth. I find alternate ways to move forward with my relationship to my past: one that is neither consumed by it nor disavows it. I’m rethinking suffering in a way that is productive, a necessary process in order to rebuild and move forward. Instead of perceiving loss as a burden, I choose to recognize loss as a connection by preserving it within.
Jean Shon is a multidisciplinary artist and educator living and working in Houston, Texas. Through immersive installations, photography, image-based work, and text, her practice explores memory, identity, loss, il/legibility, and recovery in the context of family history and surrounding community. Jean’s work centers around the preservation of narratives, modes of healing, uncovering obscure histories, and archival processes. Focusing on ruptures, fragments, and historical residue, she shows how various forms of loss—from the personal to communal—can be regenerative, serving as the connective tissue to the past.
Jean earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California-Irvine and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has participated in several residences, including the Galveston Artist Residency, Surel’s Place, and Prairie Ronde Artist Residency. Jean recently exhibited at the Galveston Artist Residency in Texas and PRJCT in Los Angeles, as well as solo and group shows at various locations from Southern California to Idaho and Michigan. She currently teaches at the University of Houston and San Jacinto College.
