My work began from the place where the low tide and high tide are dragging each other in 2018. I had been meeting the finite - infinite moment from the fleeting wind and clouds passing through my skin, waves escaping and coming back in, scattering leaves of trees constantly waving their body in the small and large wind. I was repeatedly asking questions about life amid encounters, co-existence, separation, and loss with small and large beings I met.
When I worked on the early ‘Journey painting series’, it was triggered by the lifelong question ‘ why I live’ and the experiences encountered to evolve my pressure to be perfect in the competitive community in Korea. At this point, it was considered one of the reasons why I do not want to express specific figures in my painting. I tried to dismantle my experiences which I had stuck to, rebounded, and deconstructed in an effort to exist as myself- the whole process of my painting was understanding about why I am doing this, what I want to see from this practice. From the painting, I had been exploring abstract imagery that emerges from the overly layered texture on the surface as a non-narrative form. I let images be blurred and reconstructed through my diverse range of actions - drawing lines, scratching, rubbing and so on. It seems an impersonal gesture rebounding against representing something. Over the past few years, while dismantling, building, and destroying my process in the journey paintings, I had chances to meet new people in unfamiliar places, losses and separations due to unavoidable circumstances. ; which was natural.
In Buddhism, it is said that everything is impermanent - just fleeting.
By now, for me, ‘Journey’ has reflected a sense of life's uncertainty, floating within it and leaving traces as a result of that act in the work. It is meditative and cultivated. The process of ‘Journey painting’s left as a trajectory embracing and understanding all the moments I have experienced from dismantling myself. Accepting other beings and engraving in my mind ,whether meeting or losing, are connected from past to future- even if we do not have physical presence anymore.
2021 was an insanely hard time in my life. I had separation experiences of loved ones from death. My grandfather passed away at that moment, I was continuously looking back on my childhood while I was walking to the cemetery with relatives. I had looked around the house where my mother was born and raised. The swing that was my childhood friend still hangs there. I always fear death when I close my eyes. Is time linear? What is at the end? Is the end the end? A few months later, my dog we had been together with for 12 years suddenly started to get sick. I cannot forget when she gradually stopped breathing. On that day, I made a self-centered decision to do my work and I didn’t stay with her. I highly regret my decision on that day. And I am sure, this experience pushed me to re-understanding what is my value in life. Every relationship requests responsibility whether you receive love or give it. In the end, you need to accept huge pain. And yet, isn't this the paradox of life? Even so, the reason why I am carrying my life is because the time I spent with you was never in vain, so it stays somewhere in my heart, and I believe I shared our time with you.
I moved to the UK for my master’s degree in 2022. I believe studying abroad in London was inevitable for me. I have learnt loads of life-learning experiences - living as an alien taught me fear, naively, a side of myself I had not seen, how to be frustrated, how to miss, how to be humble, and the courage to say that I love what I see and like more. I thought my generation has quite a hybrid-culture from globalisation, nevertheless, I found myheritage and femininity in ways I might have tried to deconstruct while living in Seoul. There are definitely weird textures from my context due to the fact that I am not from this country. There are languages that are fixed and read in a specific way thanks to where I am coming from. Since then, throughout my journey practice , I have been understanding and accepting my whole experiences from a broader perspective.
When examining an individual closely, one would find a complex and multifaceted identity with various layers. While I mention my experiences, it is not to overcome them, but rather to acknowledge and understand them in an attempt to open up new possibilities. When someone gives a name in the specific object, it can be a possibility, simultaneously, limitation with labelling paradoxically. This is what I am afraid of. When I just group as a certain ethnic, or specific gender, my uniqueness is lost and becomes grouped under some concept which is pushing away diverse context. I also want to draw attention to what is behind what is defined. It is the reason why I do not use specific colours in my painting. At the same time, it is the reason why I have argued that black and white colour is including all the colours in the same place like mixture of colour and mixture of light. This is the possibility itself. I am trying to reveal myself as an unknown possibility. My journey will be the process of destroying the journey itself. It can be the concept itself of colour what I am asserting, the notion of painting itself.
Through the process of self-destruction and reconstruction, I am a stranger here, this is how I try to dismantle myself, I have found freedom and meditative energy. From encountering that shape to losing, I have been feeling we are still connected to each other.
Journey is life, which is unpredictable, uncertain, disappearing, re-constructing, interconnecting, making harmony and rhythm. I surrender myself completely to this journey like an unpredictable past, akin to our unknown future.