MFA|EDA 2016 Thesis Exhibition: The Karen: A Forgotten People

Kihae Kim: The Karen: A Forgotten People
Since 1949, Burmese governments and military regimes have waged war against the Karen, an ethnic and religious minority in the region. This story of war, human rights abuses, and diaspora is still unfolding, with hundreds of thousands of Karen internally displaced and fleeing to other countries. For this exhibition, I photographed two Karen refugee camps in Thailand and a group of Karen youth living with their families in Carrboro, North Carolina. These photographs are part of my larger documentary effort - in the face of other huge refugee crises around the world - to keep the Karen story in the public eye.