Young Cash Karen
2017- ongoing
Young Cash Karen is an ongoing project about a close-knit community of young refugees from Myanmar (or Burma) who have resettled in Rochester, New York. They are Karen (pronounced kuh-ren), an indigenous ethnic minority that has fought a decades long and still ongoing civil war against the Burmese military regime, the Tatmadaw, over the native lands of their people and for their very right to exist. The Tatmadaw systemically attacks Karen villages, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of Karen people. For most or all of their lives, the young men of Young Cash Karen lived in remote refugee camps across the Myanmar border in Thailand, until taking the leap to resettle in the United States during a now-ended program under the Obama administration. Some came with family members and some came alone. Young Cash Karen is the self-chosen name of the brotherhood they have formed together. They proudly use the name to express a sense of belonging and solidarity amongst each other and with the global Karen refugee diaspora.
The project has developed into a multilayered and nuanced exploration of the intersections of culture, ethnicity, and gender. It portrays a tribe of young men who are experiencing the difficult process of displacement and cultural adaptation. Yet despite their hardships they retain a sense of unapologetic pride of their identity and history. Both the subtle and apparent effects of globalization, assimilation to American society, and the preservation of parts of their endangered Southeast Asian culture create a compelling mixture of fashion, music, language, and lifestyle.
(cont.)
Tattoo culture also plays a prominent role in the work, and in the claiming and preservation of their Southeast Asian cultural heritage. The young men tattoo each other as an act of brotherly manhood and as a practice of a tribal tradition. They permanently and proudly mark their skin with culturally symbolic imagery and line work. Many of them have the entire surface of their back covered with intricate designs. In the warmer seasons they flaunt these markings shirtless, further obtaining a distinct identity. To most outsiders, it is apparent these young men are not American. They have made the choice not to seamlessly assimilate, not to whitewash their bodies– despite the social repercussions this comes with. It is an act of celebration as well as rebellion. They unapologetically announce their outsider status to the Western world; a simple act that the Burmese military regime forbid them to do and for which they now have the freedom.
In addition to portraits, collaborative drawing pieces are incorporated into the work because I felt this to be a more honest depiction of their lives than anything I alone could make. I see the drawings as another facet or tool for self-representation. They are collaborative in that the paper is handmade by me out of scraps of blue-denim jeans. The denim is symbolic of their fashion. The pen drawings are done by some of the guys in Young Cash Karen.
My own identity as a Thai-American woman is a part of the work as well, as it shapes my relationship with this community I've become so close to. It is important to me to be sensitive and vulnerable about authorship & depiction in this ongoing work.