Seven, Seven, Seven: Interwoven Memories
A solo exhibition by Heesoo Kwon in collaboration with Elena Serrano
Opening Reception: Oct 18, 2025
1-4pm
2285 Gallery + EastSide Arts Alliance
2285 International Blvd, Oakland CA
Image Credit:
Heesoo Kwon, L_F-1.0-2025_ESAA-Grandma-James_UNK, AI-manipulated image, 2025
Exhibition Dates: October 18, 2025 - December 19, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday October 18, 2025 1pm - 4pm
Seven, Seven, Seven: Interwoven Memories
Home is a place both familiar and magical to us. From the scent of a family meal being prepared on the stove to the laughter and songs at gatherings, the traces of our everyday lives and important life milestones echo throughout these spaces and become keepers of memories. Harnessing the powerful presence of generational stories that have been unfolding in the family home of Elena Serrano, co-founder of EastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA), Seven, Seven, Seven is a residency project by interdisciplinary artist Heesoo Kwon, organized in collaboration with Elena and her daughter Ariana Serrano on the occasion of ESAA’s 25th anniversary.
While in residence at “Camp Magi’que”, the Serrano family’s home in Oakland, Heesoo takes on the role of a guest archivist and documentarian as she delves into their familial archives and history. The artist participates in everyday activities with Elena, Ariana, and Ola (Elena’s mother) for her research into the seven generations of family members and the legacy of ESAA, and records special moments of homelife and happenings at the cultural center with new photographs and videos. Drawing inspiration from family photos, food recipes, cookware, personal objects, and oral histories, Heesoo recounts familial histories, ancestral wisdom, and spiritual beliefs passed down to generations of women in the Serrano family. The artist also examines cross-cultural connections that link the Serrano family’s matriarchs to seven generations of her own woman ancestors from South Korea through seven thematic focuses — home, caregiving, migration, food, motherhood, community, and family.
From Mississippi to California and from North to South Korea, parallel stories about migration and women’s roles in domestic life and community draw a throughline between the two continents. By bringing photographs, videos, and objects from both Heesoo’s family and “Camp Magi’que” into the gallery, this exhibition will bridge the respective homes in Oakland and Seoul to ESAA. Creating a gathering space for the community of East Oakland and visitors to reflect on past ancestors and to imagine ourselves as prospective ancestors for speculative futures and generations to come.
Curated by Karen Cheung.
About the artist and collaborators
Heesoo Kwon (b. 1990 in South Korea) is a multimedia artist who engages in ritualistic, auto-ethnographic, and archival practices drawing from her personal life and relationships, femme genealogies and Korean mythology and traditions. Using digital technologies as procreant tools to forge and traverse realms, Kwon engages in the uncovering and rewriting of matrilineal histories, the queering of familial relations and patriarchal codes, and envisioning new forms of archives. Informed by her Catholic upbringing, Kwon initiated the autobiographical feminist religion Leymusoom in 2017, which takes its name from museongbyeol(무성별), the Korean word for ‘agender.’ She traces personal and ancestral memories in the ongoing process of building an auto-ethnographic archive within the heterotopic Leymusoom Universe, modeled after existing and imagined locations from her life and community. Kwon’s female ancestors are reincarnated as avatars alongside the serpentine deity Leymusoom, a fusion of the Korean folkloric origin myth of Mago and the Catholic tale of Genesis. By re-appropriating religion, geography and time as queer sites of communal belonging, Kwon proposes a radical departure from dominant hegemonic structures by establishing and embodying nonlinear, otherly temporalities and ecologies of co-existence.
Karen Cheung is a curator based in San Francisco. She has contributed writings to Art Practical, Open Space, MARCH Journal of Art and Strategy, Voices in Contemporary Art Journal, Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, monographic publications of Heesoo Kwon and Isaac Chong Wai. Previous curatorial projects include performances by Naama Tsabar, Suzanne Lacy, and Postcommodity; solo exhibitions by Julian Charrière, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Nam June Paik; group exhibitions at SWIM Gallery and Mills College Museum of Art. She has lectured at the Tainan National University of the Arts and presented at programs and symposiums organized by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Mori Art Museum. She has held various positions at KADIST, the Vancouver Art Gallery, De Young Museum, and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, CA. She is currently Curatorial Associate of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she recently organized Janet Cardiff: The Telephone Call, Alexandra Pirci: Re-collection, New Work: Samson Young, and is working on a new commission by Raven Chacon.