Sena, and Their Garden

A two-part interactive project about the acceptance of queer youth by themselves as well as by their parents in Christian Korean circles.

Sena, (the comma is part of the title) concerns a young lesbian woman whose story emerges from eight anonymous interviews. You follow the narrative on a computer screen that looks like her own personal desktop. You can choose to read notes in old diaries and view photographs (and then return them to folders marked with the relevant date) belonging to this young Korean woman whose Christian faith repudiates her love for another woman. It’s tearing her apart.

In Their Garden you hear clips from interviews with a Korean mother who is struggling to reconcile her child’s queer identity with her own Christian faith. The story takes the form of a simple mobile game in which you—in the form of a cute dog symbolizing unconditional love—watch as this mother, like the young woman you got to know in Sena, gradually breaks down barriers on the road to a complete and loving acceptance of her own identity and that of others.