Artists-in-Residence: Jiyon Hong and Alice Gosti

Spring – Summer 2023

Mistake and Fall  by Jiyon Hong

Jiyon Hong was born and raised in South Korea and is currently living and working in Seattle, USA. She received her BFA from Kookmin University and MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, USA. In addition to multiple solo shows including a two-person show at ARSG gallery (LACMA) and Gallery2 in South Korea, Jiyon has been an Artist in residence in Berlin, Paris, Reykjavik, and Keumho Museum, Seoul (KR). She is interested in the gap between so-called objective reality and one’s perceived reality and how the latter mutates (transitions), moving away from the real before us. At her Inscape Artist-in-Residency, Jiyon will attempt to map the City of Seattle through her imagination, the real location, and her interpretation through site-specific installation, and paintings.

Alice Gosti’s residency culminates in the world premiere performance of where is home : third shore.

Four immigrant solo dancers will guide the audience through Seattle’s Inscape building. These unique tours will integrate the performers’ embodied immigration experiences with the Inscape building’s history as an Immigration and Naturalization Center. Led by Italian-American choreographer Alice Gosti, the artistic team is composed entirely of immigrant artists. The show is produced by MALACARNE and supported by Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4 Culture, ArtsWA Restart, and ArtsWA Revive.

LIMITED RUN: June 16-18, tours beginning at 6PM each night

Please follow these links to the Facebook event page and ticketing.

How do we bridge immigrant experiences through performance? How do we celebrate our immigrant identity without exoticization? How do we examine the complex history of the Inscape building alongside the sharing of our own personal immigrant histories?

These are the timely questions driving where is home : third shore. Gosti, along with the extraordinary Seattle-based immigrant artist cast, developed choreography using these questions as a base to create each unique dance-based tour experience.

As a part of the creation process, the immigrant artists have spent time in the Inscape building, immersing themselves in its hallways and holding rooms. They have also examined their own history, mythology and pulled from culturally-specific gestures of their home countries.

The artists are especially excited to share the work with Seattle’s immigrant communities as a way to create new connections, build bridges, and foster community. The work can be experienced by anyone, regardless of the language that they speak or their history with dance performance. To emphasize their intention to share this work with Seattle’s immigrant community, MALACARNE is offering discount/sliding scale tickets. Reach out to hello@malacarne.co for more info.

The immigrant artist team is led by Alice Gosti (Italy), and includes composer Tomo Nakayama (Japan), lighting designer Chih-Hung Shao (Taiwan), costume designer Ophir El-Boher (Israel) and performers Marceline Nyakirindo (Munyamulenge/Democratic Republic of Congo), Sofiya Kostareva (Ukraine & Russia), Margaret Luxamon Hotchkiss (Thailand), and Prasti Purdum (Indonesia).

Accessibility Information: Each tour will last one hour and will require walking, standing, and climbing stairs. Select show times will incorporate use of the elevator instead of the stairs.

Photo by Chris Edwards Photography

Alice Gosti (she/her) is a transnational immigrant performance artist, choreographer and cultural strategist who creates site-responsive dance and live art installations that examine how history, politics and place enter the body and condition how we move and relate. Gosti works under the name MALACARNE, an experimental ensemble that relies on transparent and equitable partnerships with artists, communities and institutions in pursuit of social justice. Born in Perugia, Italy and raised by artists SANDFORD&GOSTI, she’s worked between Italy and occupied Duwamish land (Seattle) since 2008. In 2021, Gosti received the Princess Grace Choreography Honoraria award for her lifelong commitment to performance and centering immigrant realities.

Drawing on current/historical social realities, her dances center experiences made invisible by white-normative power structures, fighting reductive ideas about class, gender, ability and ethnicity. She’s co-authored pieces grounded in authentic community storytelling with immigrants, trans-activists, Indigenous populations and those experiencing homelessness. Through “How to Become a Partisan,” “Material Deviance in Contemporary American Culture,” “Invisible Womxn” and “Bodies of Water”, she’s used dance to investigate fascism, unfettered capitalism, the othering of womxn, and Seattle’s relationship to water.