I take quotidian yet traditional objects, images, or environments and represent them through repetitive and tactile practice. This allows me to implant the intricacy and repetition of human acts and emotions, responding to contemporary and historical issues of violence related to the community. Objects and landscapes I sensually revisit are artifacts of the past or environments embodying the unmonumental-ness of everyday life. They function as the silent landscape where isolation and solidarity, individual and community, material and emotion, inheritance and discontinuity coexist.
The meditation on the disappearance of ritualistic hands-on processes, combined with curiosity about the self within the context of nature, brought me to explore clay. I delve into its physicality and spirituality as a sensorial language to communicate the resilience and power of focusing on the process in representation.
I admire paintings, sculptures, artifacts, architecture, and textiles with the patina of time. They still capture the dynamics and subtle rhythm of the surrounding environment from the past. Growing up in South Korea, which experienced sudden colonialism, wars, ideological divisions, economic crises, and rapid economic growth within a hundred years, I was always curious about the past of the surrounding environment and people. I wondered what connects us as a community when facing generational fragmentation and disconnection. So, I delved into history, personal artifacts, and memories imbued with intimate human emotion, provoking a sense of connection and belonging.
Clay supplies its softness and dynamic chemical reaction, allowing me to think of myself as a body with liminal organs and nerves. It embodies the knowledge, memory, and DNA of the history I desire, destined to cycle back to the earth. Through clay, I explore multifaceted senses of the ritual of life and death. I feel connected and resilient when working and processing with this material.