Month: December 2015

ABC Asian Artists Residency Program , Siheung City, South Korea (2015)

In September 2015, I had the opportunity to join the A3 Artist Residency in Siheung City, South Korea — a four-month public art residency hosted by the Mayor of Siheung City. Artists from Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea participated in this international exchange program.

As a representative from Bangladesh, Abu Naser Robii spent a remarkable period of artistic exploration and cultural engagement during this residency. His project focused on meeting and interacting with Bangladeshi migrant workers living and working in South Korea. Through numerous visits, meals, and conversations, he observed and documented their daily lives, working conditions, and the complex realities of living abroad.

Robii discovered that many migrant workers were staying in Korea without a valid legal status, often due to difficult circumstances that prevented them from returning home. He sought to understand the reasons behind their decisions to remain undocumented after their visa expiration.

His meetings and observations were discreetly documented through hidden-camera video recordings, which were later edited to remove personal identities while highlighting the underlying social issues. These recordings were transformed into an online video archive, accessible through QR codes printed beneath Soju cups.

Hundreds of these cups were joined together with epoxy resin to create glowing spherical sculptures. After the Open Studio Exhibition, these light spheres were permanently installed in a local library. Visitors could scan the QR codes on the sculptures to watch the videos and experience the stories of the migrant workers firsthand.

The installation symbolically presented these “light spheres” as archives of migrant laborers’ struggles, turning their invisible realities into a luminous space for public reflection and empathy.