"My Treasure Chest" - The Importance of Preserving Culture
Uzbek & Korean
“I think spending a lot of time as a kid with my grandmother has influenced me greatly a person. She was a very hard-working, intelligent woman, a Soviet-Korean who had seen it all, and became successful in her field of work but remained very humble, because she came from poverty herself - her parents were simple field workers.
She instilled a lot of values in me, the main one being remembering who you are and your roots. She was the one who told me about the Japanese occupation, the Korean war, the deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union, and my family clan. All the things that I do today, whether it's drawing, sculpting, or making Hanji (한지), are the result of her giving that wisdom to me.
I think it's important to preserve our culture, to pass down that knowledge, because this is our collective experience that we can all learn from – it's our treasure chest.”
“I was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. We immigrated to Russia when I was a teenager. I'm a 5th generation Koryo-Saram (고려사람). Back in the day, Koreans still lived in somewhat small communities; some neighborhoods were known to be predominantly Korean, so at home you would hear Koryo-mal (고려말) and Russian being spoken, but then outside most people spoke Uzbek.
I pretty much feel like a foreigner, all my life, no matter where I go. I'm sure a lot of diaspora kids can relate to that. I was born already a foreigner, then I became an immigrant from Central Asia in Russia, and now I'm just an Uzbek-Korean-Russian (?) based in Europe. I really hold on to my Koryo-saram identity, and having experienced all kinds of discrimination within my assimilation process in every country I’ve lived – has only made that bond stronger. Whenever I feel alone or lost, I turn to my roots. That's the one thing nobody can take away from me.
One thing I'd like to point out, though, is that there is a difference between passing down wisdom versus passing down trauma. It takes time to learn to tell the two apart, and what you're gonna take away from it is then up to you.”
These writings and photos are provided by Olga Kim, an Uzbek-Korean folk artist.
You can see more of her work here.
