Seeing and remembering: Rene Yung's art installations set out to capture experiences of migration.(culture)

At first glance, artist Rene Yung's solemn yet intimately familiar mixed-media installations appear to address the idea of diaspora--particularly considering Yung's work with immigrant communities, which has inspired some of her most provocative art. But when you dig deeper into the many layers of her pieces, they're less inspired by immigration than they are by issues of community visibility. "My work isn't merely about immigration or identity politics," says Yung, who emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States as a teenager. "I'm interested in concepts that are woven into the very fabric of American life."

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Yung, a recipient of the prestigious Creative Work Fund Award, worked as a graphic designer in San Francisco for about 10 years but in 1990 turned to art full time. In 1995, her work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale.

About four years ago, Yung found a niche--this time, in Seattle, with the Artist Residencies Transforming Seattle's Urban Places (ARTS UP) program. The program teams community groups with artists to explore issues of identity and environment. Yung was paired with Kawabe House, a HUD-financed facility providing both low-income housing and a senior citizen center for residents, most of whom are Japanese and Korean immigrants. Yung recorded over a hundred hours of oral histories with the seniors, and designed a series of 16 postcards based on the stories of the Kawabe community. Entitled Postcards in Time, the multimedia installation is composed of the postcards, photographs and community narratives. People talked about experiences of immigration, and each postcard has a caption on the back that earmarks the story being told in the image.

At first, the elderly immigrants were reluctant to have Yung interview them. Their reaction, Yung recalls, was "Who, me? I'm nobody." Once they saw the installation, however, they felt visible, Yung says. Some even commented to her that "they should do a book about us."

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Yung's Postcards in Time demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of her approach and ranges ...