Hwa Records @ 41. Ross Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Photo Credit: Robert Borsdorf
Filmed by: Huan Cheng
Sound: Roger Kim
Performers: Roger Kim, Saewon Oh, Caroline Yoo
Edited: Caroline Yoo
Hwa Records is a team of Korean diasporic performance based artists and healers composed of Roger Kim, Saewon Oh, Kayla Tange, and Caroline Yoo. Hwa Records was conceived after Caroline Yoo was diagnosed with hwa-byung in 2020. Hwa-byung (fire sickness) is a Korean folk syndrome attributed to the suppression of anger where pent up emotions then manifest in the body.
This documented performance between Roger Kim, Saewon Oh, and Caroline Yoo was originally a live performance spanning 25 minutes at 41.Ross Gallery in San Francisco. Kim played the Korean traditional Janggu, the heartbeat of our performance. Yoo opened the performance with a monologue around her deceased grandmother while Oh braided Yoo’s hair - a nod to the Han (ancestral knowledge, repressed emotion, burden, untranslatable feelings of grief, but also resilience) that lives in our bodies.
The Hwa Records team not only performs and purges individual and collective hwa, loosely translated to fire, rage, and/or pent-up emotion, but also creates rituals for our ancestors to feel at peace by honoring and sending off our historical traumas and contemporary diaspora hauntings in the performance.