Lotus L. Kang's latest exhibition, "Already," is on view at 52 Walker in New York through June 7, 2025. The Brooklyn-based Canadian artist transforms the gallery into a diasporic memoryscape using steel greenhouses, mixed-media paintings, sculpture, and found objects like oversized kelp knots and soju bottles. The show takes its title from a poem in Kim Hyesoon's "Autobiography of Death" (2016), and Kang's installation explores themes of presence and absence, memory, and the transmutative qualities of photography and film. In an interview, Kang discusses how Korean poetry helps her understand her own origins as a Korean-Canadian gyopo, and how translation—both linguistic and material—shapes her work.
The exhibition matters because it positions translation as an act of creative and political resistance, particularly relevant in a moment of widespread miscommunication. Kang's work engages with the legacy of the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster and South Korea's neocolonial status, connecting personal diasporic experience to broader historical and political narratives. By foregrounding the limitations and possibilities of translation, Kang contributes to a growing discourse among contemporary artists who use translation as an anti-neocolonial mode, while also pushing the boundaries of installation art through her innovative use of greenhouses as containers of development and permeability.