Tyler Park Presents is pleased to present The Weight of Memory, Andrea Chung’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from January 20 through February 24, 2024.

Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources say that she was the first woman to create a photograph. However, what people don’t know is that Atkins’ husband and father-in-law were slave owners and had at least eight plantations in Jamaica. Atkins contributed to upholding white supremacy through the practice of colonial and imperial taxonomy, and the colonial idea of “discovery” in attempts to erase already existing indigenous knowledge.

Through a destructive and regenerative process, Chung worked with a papermaker to create new sheets of paper and pulp using Anna Atkins: Cyanotypes book published by Taschen. The pages were shredded, blended, and soaked creating the pulp that is an amalgamation of cyan blue images, orange spine binding, white borders, and texts that result in a distinct pale blue color with glimpses of words. Using this material, Chung has formed on the surface of the paper figures that reference West African figures and incorporate cyanotype images of Xaymaca (Jamaican) algae and ferns printed by Atkins over or around the figures. Intersecting ideas of reclaiming but also touching on histories that already existed through the process and action of destroying and rebuilding.

Andrea Chung (b. 1978, Newark, NJ) lives and works in San Diego, California. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design, New York, and a MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Her work has been exhibited in biennales such as Prospect 4, New Orleans, and the Jamaican Biennale, Kingston, Jamaica as well as the subject of museum solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Manetti Shrem Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada. Her work has been included domestically and internationally at venues recently such as the Nasher Museum at Duke University, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Frist Art Museum, Ford Foundation Art Galleries, Guangdong Times Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Center. She has participated in national and international residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, McColl Center for Visual Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been written about in the Artfile Magazine, New Orleans Times, Picayune, Artnet, The Los Angeles Times, and International Review of African-American Art among others. Her work is included in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, NoVo Foundation, Cleveland Clinic Art & Medicine Institute, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Davis Museum at Wesley College, the Addison Museum of American Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.