The Vaccine Archive
Project lead: Vicki Sung-yeon Kwon
In collaboration with Hwirin, Sergio Serrano, Morgan Wedderspoon, and Lathika Sritharan
Memories and Records: The Vaccine Archive (2017)
Photographic prints on Photo Tex (16" × 22"); installation of an archive collection of photographs, postage stamps, postcards, and vaccine documents (dimension variable); and participants & visitor survey cards.
Travelling Memories: The Vaccine Archive (2021)
24 postcards (5” x 7”) on a postcard rack (64.5" x 24")
In collaboration with Hwirin, Sergio Serrano, Morgan Wedderspoon, and Lathika Sritharan
Memories and Records: The Vaccine Archive (2017)
Photographic prints on Photo Tex (16" × 22"); installation of an archive collection of photographs, postage stamps, postcards, and vaccine documents (dimension variable); and participants & visitor survey cards.
Travelling Memories: The Vaccine Archive (2021)
24 postcards (5” x 7”) on a postcard rack (64.5" x 24")
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The Vaccine Archive project explores both individual and collective memories of vaccination across geographic borders, inspiring thoughts on visual communication relating to immunization. The collected artefacts, prints, and participant interviews offer views into the varied conditions surrounding global immunization: the ethnic, cultural, gender, and geopolitical sensitivity of visual representation in vaccine advertisements and the dissemination of vaccines in the Global South. The Vaccine Archive project studies how the visual culture of vaccination forms and spreads the collective memory of vaccines, reinforcing stereotypes infused with political propaganda and fear associated with misinformation.
In the exhibition Immune Nations, held in Norway and Switzerland in 2017, Memories and Records: The Vaccine Archive displayed the archive in portable vitrines and printed selected images from the archive, enlarged and paired with interview excerpts, on Photo Tex, the medium used for murals or advertising billboards. Public participation is a key part of this project. Participants of various nationalities shared their immunization records and memorabilia for display at the 2017 exhibitions. The display included participant interviews conducted by Kwon with people from various ethnic and national backgrounds, especially those who have experience of migration—including a North Korean defector—on their memory of vaccines. Visitors to Immune Nations in Norway (2017) and to Kwon's open house during a researcher residency program at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2019), were invited to participate by filling out a survey on their memory of vaccines. These interviews were incorporated, with pseudonyms, in the re-iteration of this project, titled Travelling Memories: The Vaccine Archive (2021). |
Rethinking "The Vaccine Archive" in the Era of Covid-19
In the exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, selected archive materials and interview texts are redesigned as a set of 24 postcards and displayed on a postcard rack, as if they were postcards sold at a souvenir shop. Under a new title, Travelling Memories: The Vaccine Archive, this redesign is intended to reflect the travel ban during the pandemic and the original mediums of the archive—postage stamps or postcards created for easy and wide dissemination of information and promotion of vaccines. These postcards also turn the participant interviews into captive images. Created in collaboration with illustrator Hwirin and designer Sergio Serrano, the 24 postcards convey racial and gender stereotypes, vaccines in political propaganda, stigmatization, needle fear, unequal distribution of vaccines in the Global South, mass killing of infected animals, and travel bans in the era of COVID-19. — Vicki S. Kwon, August 2021 |
