There are some artist's projects which require a little background information in order to appreciate fully. As the art-making world becomes larger and encompasses greater numbers of practitioners from increasingly varied backgrounds, intersecting cultures and geographic locations, so too grows the need to provide necessary context for work whose meaning might be completely obfuscated without it.

Jinkyun Ahn, based in Seoul, Korea, first conceived of his project En Cave while fulfilling a task of familial duty. He writes:

When I returned to Korea four years ago to begin compulsory military service, one of my first responsibilities as the eldest grandson was to visit my grandparents' burial sites as a sign of respect. Nearby their burial sites is an empty plot where my parents will also one day be buried. As I stood in front of the plot, my parents walked into my line of vision. Suddenly I realized that I would stand at that very spot at my parents' funerals some day. I could not stop the inevitable transformation of the view—from living parents to graves—nor could I turn away from the view where my parents' deaths will be evident. Like the chained slaves forced to watch illusions in Plato's cave, I am bound to observe a scene of my parents' death in the graveyard.

En Cave #15 by Jinkyun Ahn

En Cave #14 by Jinkyun Ahn

Ahn constructed his own "Cave" where this performance could be enacted and shared by himself and his parents without any actual funeral having to occur. Much like his concept of living through his parents' funeral by conducting an artful preemptive rehearsal of it, his artistic method is equally transparent, which I favor for its no-nonsense emotional pragmatism:

The view not only includes me and my parents but photographic equipment such as light stands and electric wires. The apparatus is exposed rather than hidden; my photographic process is photographed explicitly.

En Cave #17 by Jinkyun Ahn

Through his project En Cave, Ahn is reconciling the fact of his personal ties and history being inextricably bound up in the person he is trying to carve himself out to be apart from those familial ties and that culturally inscribed history. The act of reconciliation is necessary because, in the end he recognizes his to be an, "...experience of helplessness not only in creating highly conceptualized art in the early 21st century but also in performing as a son according to Confucian tradition in a Korean family."

The act of honoring and paying tribute to the ancestral dead is a rich subject that many contemporary Asian artists are visiting with an eye towards contemporary critique and commentary of culture-jamming. Ahn's work brought to my mind the recent project In Case It Rains in Heaven, by Hot Shot and 2009 Ultra Kurt Tong. Focusing upon the ritual burning of Joss paper as offerings to ancestors and the recently departed, Tong recreates the complicated narrative that exists in developing these offerings—a narrative being increasingly tailored to reflect material goods and status symbols that the dead perhaps were never able to attain. Or, goods that current cultural standards hold to be a meaningful and valuable tribute: joss-molded ipods, designer shoes, household appliances and automatic rifles.

Both Jinkyun Ahn's and Kurt Tong's work shows that even while centuries-old customs are still respected and observed, that the intersection of those traditions with other cultures and value systems is inevitable. Reflecting on these changes through art is an important and meaningful task as an artist so that one can fully understand and communicate those differences in their work.