생존전략(生存戰略, survival strategy)
No fear No god, 2024. Mixed media on linen, 72 x 72 in.
If I become more and more transparent, how can I leave my trace?
I grew up exposed to animations related to "The Magic Girl." In 1998, the Radical Feminist Movement in the U.S. met a fierce backlash, and East Asian cultures saw "the failure of the revolution." In response, animation creators transformed female characters from maternal-love messiah existence into "revolutionaries" who use fantasy power to save the world. However, in order to not become witches, they must conform to their fate of sacrificing themselves (Cardcaptors, 1998-2000).
However, as time goes by, the modern era became individually complicated, questions arouse revolutionizing individual power. The Magic Girl in Mawaru Penguindrum (2011) deals with the collapse of a massive discourse centered on the perpetrators' families after the failure of the Tokyo Sarin Attack in Japan, and the Magic Girl in Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) constantly twists time to confront the fate of individual sacrifice.
I felt that transparentizing one's identity was an incomplete sacrifice survival strategy for those girls. This overlapse with trying to erase my identity by staying in many countries such as Japan, Korea, Switzerland, and US. I spent my childhood in both Japan and Korea with complex historical relationships. For the first time this semester, I felt as though I had entered into a completely new culture that was not my own, upon entering the US. Leaving behind my own country and reaching a place where no one knows me is like leaving my past in my previous life, so I often feel as though I am being transparent to myself. This Mid-residency project is an exploration on how transparent traces of an idividual can form a single identity.
Through this project, I was able to think about the need of distance from a feeling of helplessness within reality, through various installations. The process of abstracting and adding layers, while maintaining the existing shapes of the characters was systemized. In addition, the objects whose meanings are diluted, such as covering old scorebooks with new cyano-type prints or making candles with recycled clay, this is considered “hacking” for me so that these processes could be viewed as unfamiliar substances. Furthermore, this is also an exploration to create a mechanism that effectively utilizes my neurodiverse energy and collaboration capability.
The spontaneous and nonlinear narratives would match the fudnamental importance of metacognition, which is crucial in the modern era. I want to talk about the way neurodiverse women, who need to constantly ask questions about their own roots and redefine themselves, have to live in the world. I am willing to embrace the confusion of one's identity, with experimental installations with paintings and prints.
Exit, 2024. Silkscreen on mixed media, Dimension Variable.
