Our mothers, our water, our peace

by Gyun Hur

Our mothers, our water, our peace reflects upon Atlanta Asian communities’ resilience and love. In response to Asian hate crimes that escalated during the pandemic followed by the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, Gyun Hur illuminates the irreversible changes that have taken place in the identities and stories Asian Americans tell themselves and share with their children.

In 2024, a constellation of glass vessels will be housed amongst the Atlanta Asian communities.  This array of installations will act as poetic nodes that map gestures of grief in both public and private spaces. These handblown, tear-shaped vessels will hold local creek and river water from the Atlanta region and seed conversations around intergenerational work, healing, and community engagement through a series of workshops and gatherings.

In 2025, Hur will gather these glass vessels to create a large-scale installation that will open to the public in the spring in the spirit of remembrance, lamentation, and celebration.

        This work is a hymnal

        This work is a tear

        This work is a mother

        This work is a future we don’t know

        This work is now

        This work is a provocation

        This work is an archive

        This work is remembering

        This work is grieving

        This work is a holding

        This work is a gathering

        This work is faith

Photo of Hur by MacKenna Lewis for The New School

FLOW

With Our mothers, our water, our peace, Flux Projects continues FLOW, a multi-year series designed to explore Atlanta’s history with water, how it has shaped our city, and the potential it holds for our future. FLOW engages issues of conservation, equity, and urban design through installations and performances around the city.

About the Artist

Gyun Hur is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator whose biographical context as a first-generation immigrant largely informs her creative practice and pedagogical approach. Born in South Korea, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia at the age of 13 and studied painting and sculpture at the University of Georgia and Savannah College of Art and Design.

In Hur’s practice, she is deeply engaged in generating poetics of beauty and grief in visual and emotional spaces she creates. Through iterations of installations, performances, drawings, and writings, Hur traverses between autobiographical abstraction and figurative storytelling, asking what holds us together; stories, yearnings, rituals, and spirituality.

Our mothers, our water, our peace is the second project with Flux Projects that commissioned Spring Hiatus about a decade ago. In both works, Hur invites the audience to participate in this labor of unraveling our layered, perplexing stories with grace and time.

See Also

Interview on City Lights with Lois Reitzes

Cathy Fox article on ArtsATL

Cathy Fox article in the AJC

Atlanta Magazine article on FLOW series

Support

Our mothers, our water, our peace is commissioned by Flux Projects and supported in part by Perennial Properties, Henry H. Arnhold Forum Fellowship, and Parsons School of Design, The New School.

We are grateful for the following organizations as our collaborating partners for the project: Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta, Asian American Advocacy Fund, Asian Student Alliance, East by Southeast, Lawrenceville Arts Center, and Alliance Theatre.  Special thanks to Easten Glass and Aluminum and University of Texas at Arlington, Art + Art History Department, Glass Area, Korean Image Archive.