Tavi Kim

My work is a record of memory that seeks to immortalize my childhood. I am concerned with the dynamics of tenderness and cruelty in adolescence, in particular the way play between boys is often steeped in violence. The specific word that I think of is “homosociality,” which describes social structures of same-sex bonds that uphold ideas of power, intimacy and hegemonic canons of masculinity. For example, wrestling and roughhousing enforce a sort of male rivalry that creates a pecking order on the basis of strength and domination. I grew up playing with BB guns and buying candy cigarettes, both of which are steeped in the insidious qualities of masculinity. They urge the user towards a specific message: these objects of ruin are the norm. The paintings I create comment on how brutality exists in boyhood and that these moments of intimacy are shared only between those with truly close bonds. Every second of mischief and every bruise gained from falling along the way are what make this period of our lives so special. Most of all, I like to distill this message into a simple statement: “I was born lucky and played endlessly.”

And so, because the work is so autobiographical, memory is a crucial component of my artmaking. A certain writer said that “as adults we lose memory of the gravity and terrors of childhood,” and I think that fits well. There is a particular nowness that you only have as a child, that feeling where whatever is occurring is the only thing that has ever happened in all of human history. This creates drama, intensity: the simple games played with your friends become epics of conquest. Memory is inherently fallible and I try my best to lean into the fiction created, retelling things as I would have as a child, not as I know them to have happened now. 

This fiction I create is my way of holding on, a sort of juvenile fight against the march of time. I’ve found that one of the most salient qualities of adulthood is that your world becomes far more boring. When you are able to look at everything as it occurs retrospectively, the drama and intensity disappear, it’s like saying “oh, this has happened before hasn’t it?” Painting the fantasy of childhood, guts and all, is the intimate act of recollection that bestows love upon the life I have lived.