Artist Statement
My artworks are a visualization of ambivalent emotions and contradicting powers that are witnessed in relationships. I mainly use painting, printmaking, and drawing as a vessel to convey ambivalence, and also uses short films and animation for artworks that require specific narratives.
My recent practice captures contradicting tendencies in relationships by making drawings that portray a symbiotic state of human organs and plants. The overarching themes of my past artworks focus on emotional ambivalence that comes from traditional notions of Korean culture, which educates that families should love each other even in the worst circumstances. I challenged this notion by creating a series of artworks depicting a fictional victim of domestic violence who discovered that compassion and love coexisted with the hatred she holds for her wrongdoers. Also through my exhibits, I choose to explore the theme of death, showing the dichotomy of people that grieves others' death and simultaneously uses it to find meaning in their own lives.
I adopted two concepts, Vanitas and Embalming to explain my art. Despite the contrasting intention of the two concepts, they bear similarities aesthetically and historically. I interpret this phenomenon as a natural circumstance due to how humans desire to control death and time but also on the other hand desire to deconstruct what they have been preserving. I find my artwork in somewhere between Vanitas and Embalming, as I try to show the process of destroying and mending at the same time.