Providence, Rhode Island
Music Composition, Multimedia

Since 1953, nearly 200,000 Korean children have been adopted into white American or European homes. As an adoptee, Bonnie Jones grew up with a sharp understanding of difference, a pervasive sense of “not-belonging” that was experienced within her body and environment. We’ve focuses on the material voices of adoptees, the acoustic properties of their speech, their personal stories, and creative expressions. Through a series of unique and generative “interviews” with adoptees and fostered individuals, Jones merges research and artistic creation to explore important and critical contemporary questions of personhood, identity, ancestry, and nation. This may take the form of sounds, texts, installations, visuals, media, or other new hybrid archival artifacts, with the only emphasis being that form is made in situ, in collaboration, and in connection—from the voice and through the voice. We’ve explores how we might create deeper and meaningful understandings of each other through sound, the literal sounds of our voices and bodies.

Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that introduces women and gender non-conforming youth to technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. TECHNE’s programs are delivered through partnerships with grassroots organizations that share an aligned commitment to racial and gender equity. Bonnie has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe, and Asia. She was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Providence, RI on the lands of the Narragansett.