I'm a multidisciplinary artist, Seoul-born now based in New York. Growing up during Korea's economic boom, I studied political science and development studies, driven by a desire for equal economic progress and then worked in several developing countries. But in my 50s, I came to see art as the ultimate path to rise above life's struggles. Artists, I believe, continuously push boundaries to transcend pain. My work is based on these ideas, and I work on topics related to environmental issues, collaboration, communication, and relationships for the coexistence of all living things, including humans. And I am investigating the aesthetics that arise from the existence and relationships of all life.

 

My current project, “My Right Hand and Your Left Hand,” is an extension of this idea. I explore a multidisciplinary approach to creativity, collaboration, participation, and constraints. This project arises from a personal experience involving an injury to my left arm, compelling me to seek something that can complement it. In this process, I embark on a creative journey that transcends the boundaries of individuality, exploring the symbiotic connection between hands, bodies, and shared experiences. Humanity has long survived through cooperation that compensates for each other's shortcomings and leverages each other's strengths. They plowed the fields together, hunted, cooked, made clothes and pottery, and had fun together. From such daily labor and play, I chose four activities: cooking, knitting, pottery, and painting. All activities are performed together with participants, utilizing my right hand and their left hand.

 

I create pieces that are as different as the number of people I work with. Although we are cooking the same egg roll, the ingredients, taste, and appearance are all different and varied. Although knitting is done using the same thread and needles, the size and volume of the stitches are subtle but different. Painting is even more interesting. Painters each have distinct personalities, but when we paint together, new and unexpected personalities that they didn't even know about are revealed.

 

“Collaboration” and “relationships” are the main themes of my work. Working together(Collaboration) is different from engaging the audience in the work. Audience participation involves the audience passively becoming a part of the work or not participating at all. However, in collaboration, two or more artists participate in an equal relationship, so a power game over sovereignty inevitably occurs. In other words, unlike a person's two hands, each hand of two people has equal will. Just as relationships in life are very complex and diverse, my work creates numerous different relationships depending on who I work with. Therefore, the process of the work is more important than the result, and the harmony, compromise, or conflict, discord created in the process becomes the work. I seek to create something entirely new that is not simply a mixture of my own characteristics and those of others. And through process, serendipity, open-ended narratives, and interaction, I strive to pursue a dialectical new aesthetic of creativity.