Our mothers, our water, our peace

by Gyun Hur

Our mothers, our water, our peace is a participatory public installation reflecting upon Atlanta’s complex history of trauma and love. Exploring the spiritual and cultural roles of water, Gyun will collaborate with Atlanta Asian communities to hold satellite installations, conversations, and workshops around grief and healing.

In 2024, hand-blown teardrop shaped glass vessels will be dispersed and installed in various sites within the Atlanta Asian communities. Gyun will re-gather the glass vessels held by the communities for a year to create a large-scale installation and open to the public on March 16, 2025, the 4th anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings, in spirit of remembrance, lamentation, and celebration.

As Gyun writes, “ I see the river’s constant movement as a choreography of grief while generating life. In my childhood memories from South Korea, rivers were sites of mourning, washing, and rejoicing. In the larger context, rivers hold ecological memories of abundance, eradication, borders, and powers.”

FLOW

With When our mothers, near the water, rebirthed cicadas, 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 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 Gyun’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, Gyun 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, Gyun invites the audience to participate in this labor of unraveling our layered, perplexing stories with grace and time.