San Francisco and Berkeley-based artist
instagram @aira_hong
I was raised by my grandmother who was illiterate farmer. Sitting next to her, I could see how the world goes behind the weak minority; people with the majority power easily ignore other voices of different lives. Since I was young, I have continued on learning languages for that reason. Because I believed that I could connect my grandmother to the indifferent world if I become a part of that majority, in other words, if I pursue higher education, learning multiple foreign languages.
Learning Swahili, I realized how African American languages have not been respected in major American society historically. Almost every American medical services doesn’t provide translations in Swahili, which is the #10 most used languages around the world. Then I experienced the same feeling—the moment whenever I felt when my grandmother couldn’t go to the bank alone only because all the papers were written without audio services. The society wasn’t built for illiterate people and does not equally represent language diversity.
My vision is to try my best, all I can do, to listen to minority’s voices and express them to the world, in the form of my language and my art.
Seen But Unheard, Homeless Documentary – 2023
Directed the documentary expressing the presences and existences of homeless people.