Rancocas Project - You & the Artist

YOUR HELP

As I start this project about flooding and climate change that will culminate in a "Crankie" performance in October this year Spring 2025, I need your help.

If you or someone you know have experienced flooding in Burlington County, NJ, please reach out and share your story. The stories will be the main content of the work. Without your stories, there will be no art.

It is not easy to share your experiences of vulnerability without knowing how it will turn out. But please be assured that the work will use the stories with utmost sensitivity and respect for the storyteller. As an artist involved in community-based work, I understand that building trust and keeping this promise is the most important part of my work in social practice.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Hello! My name is Jin! I am a NJ-based artist with research-based social practice. An example of my community-based work, WERE HERE JC, where I install historical markers about unacknowledged people's history, can be seen here.
(Read more about the artist's practice below.)

With the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Coastal Management Program (CMP), and selected by the Perkins Center for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (Arts Council), I am working on a project about the effects of climate change in Burlington County, NJ. Titled Rancocas Project, my focus is the areas of Rancocas Creek to hear stories of everyday people affected by flooding in recent years.

A part oral history project, a part research project, and a part children's theater for all ages, the Rancocas Project seeks to include stories from our neighbors with diverse backgrounds and experiences. The vision is to follow in the footsteps of those who have advocated for historical reckoning, social justice, and climate justice.

Read why it is important to address the issue now here.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST'S PRACTICE

Jin Jung is a Jersey City-based visual artist whose work threads personal experience and local history. Her sculptural objects, videos, performances, environments, and art in public spaces often weave between public knowledge and personal stories reflecting her ever-present artistic and existential investigation into who she is and where she belongs. Jin draws inspiration from her immigrant background and her experience in the art world as one of many working behind its most prestigious artists and institutions around the globe. Using time-based media, she invites her viewers to question the boundaries between play and reality and how trust and language shape our understanding of the world and our place in it.

Born in Seoul, Jin received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture from Rhode Island School of Design and her Master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jin founded the collaborative project WERE HERE JC in 2021, creating blue plaques spotlighting the people’s history on private and public fences and street signs all over Jersey City.

Jin received a 2022 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a 2022 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Jersey City Arts Council. Her collaborative project, WERE HERE JC, earned the Jersey City Arts Council’s Public Art Award in 2022 and the Theodore Conrad Preservationist Award from the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy in 2023.

https://www.jinjung.com/
@constructed_ephemera