Lyssa Park
Mom-Roach (Birth Canal), 2023
White vinyl, fan, plastic balls
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Courtesy of the artist
2023.02.003

Originally an illustrator, Lyssa Park began to work with textiles while she was attending the MFA program at UNLV. She has often used her fabric art to comment critically on the unexamined expectations that surround motherhood in Korean society. She saw her mother being affected by the pressure of those expectations, and also experienced it herself. “At twelve, when I expressed my interest in the arts, my aunt exclaimed that it would be a good hobby to have when my kids were at school, commenting on how beneficial art would be to their emotional growth. She complimented me for wanting to pursue a degree that could be used to raise children, as if this was the purpose of my body and my mind,” she says. By the time she was working on Mom-Roach she had also begun to consider the paternal influence of U.S. military bases and the way they altered family dynamics in the areas where they were located.

Item description:
Large white inflatables composed to resemble a roach. The body is prominently inflate, wide and oblong; three long half-inflated tubes splay from both lengths of the body as limbs. A round bump protrudes from one end as the head; two long tubes hang from it and pooling beneath. On the opposite side are several short strips for the tail, a scatter of pearly balls surround it from the floor.