Notes to a Friend

One woman’s written reflections on her personal journey with cancer have been transformed into an evocative multimedia installation at SITE 57 gallery. Stemming from notes written by artist Yuri Angela Chung, Notes To A Friend has expanded beyond itself, seeking to connect people who have been affected by cancer in one way or another and support the often makeshift communities that arise from a very concrete reality.

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A collaboration with actress Embeth Davidtz and architect Jacqueline Park, Notes To A Friend: The Experience allows one to engage with the themes embedded in Chung’s notes in an immersive new way. Originally posted on Instagram, Chung’s notes are translated into large letterpressed prints. Blind debossed, the notes are pressed into the paper absent of ink, offering a transitory legibility through the relief of the impressions. Within the space, an audio recording of Chung’s notes being read by Davidtz plays on loop. Sound enables sight as Davidtz’s voice reading a note cues the note’s unique projection mapping to its presence in the space, the words filling with a form of dynamic “ink” that illuminates the note and allows them to be read as they are heard. Sound becomes light and light becomes the conductor of space, guiding people through an experience that is at once intimate and collective, elevating awareness about a journey that is intensely personal and often solitary.