Body, you, world

As a medium, aspects of the human body dominate my art pieces. Focusing on the body as both subject and medium, I express my thoughts and convey messages to the audience. I love the narrative power that the body itself gives. Each part of the body shows various stories and involves different interpretations depending on the diverse perspectives. With such powerful narrative aspects of the body, I have explored and expressed various spectrums from societal problems to human instincts like emotions, senses, and memory.

In the beginning, I mostly used the body as a medium to speak out about the improperness and dissatisfaction with the world. It’s because I’ve thought that the body is the first layer to experience and feel the world and circumstances, it was the most effective means of communication. Especially, I used to express the message with the expression of the garment because the garment also has the power to convey the concept as the wrapped layer over the body we always are together daily. In the early stage of a combination of fashion and body, I handled the stereotypes and expectations toward the body. I was unsatisfied that society and culture make the rule of the body and we followed without a doubt which is right or not. My first project is called “Beauty” which was constructed in 2018. The project started with a sentence from the mother. My mother has operation marks from heart disease and a cesarean section. She always has wanted to hide them by covering them with a turtleneck top and full length of the top. Not only the events for my mother but also me and many women had suffered from specific appearance. I had always tried to hide my body with big-size clothes because I thought my body was not appropriate to wear beautiful clothing. I wanted to get closer to the standard of beauty and I had a desire to be skinnier. I can say that many of my female friends shared the same desire. Through the project, I wanted to get rid of the idea of the standard of beauty. By expressing the exaggerated body parts with scars, fat, and stretch lines as the detail of the garment, I intended to give a different perspective on the specific inferiority. Whatever we look like, we are beautiful. Even if you have scars, fat, or whatever you don't like in your body, you are beautiful. Besides the external features, there is a lot of loveliness we have. We cannot see our moments. We cannot catch How our smiles are beautiful, how we are beautiful when we fall in love, and how we are lovely when feeling happy. We don’t know how such beautiful moments make us beautiful. With such projects that handle society's problems and prejudices, I got many feedbacks that can open the direction where can I go. The strongest response was that the body as a medium is strong enough to grab the attention firmly, which gives space to think and interpret. I have realized the power of influence of the body itself. From there, I decide to go forward with the body deeply and widely.

The next step with the body was explorations. Rather than focusing on the expressions of the body as a conversation with the world, I wanted to dig into the possibility and extension of the body. By dividing, fragmentizing, combining, connecting, and collaging, I tried to explore how our body can deliver the message narratively and powerfully. From the process, I struggled to get closer to the meaning and function of the body. In the beginning, my interpretation of the body is that itself not only takes the role of exploring the world but also conducts as a medium of self-expression. However, we focused on the purpose of 'self-expression' increasingly. Excluding the role of the affective layer, we only target how I look and how can I get closer to the image that I want. I thought that was the next problem I want to explore. "Body, art, ?" is one of the experimental works that shows the consideration of my direction to the future goal. The work shows the fragmentized body part, connecting irregularly at the same time. From here, I have zoomed in on the specific part of the body and reconstructed the perspective of the body by connecting. By recreating the viewpoints, we can remake interpretation, meaning, and function. Breaking the body into parts and connecting them sporadically leads to breaking the fixed viewpoints. Therein, people reconsider the meaning of the body and its function. However, the one thing that I regret is that even if it could break the very first layer of our viewpoint toward the body, we still have the fixed point. Because the project is also expressed with visual aspects of the body which narrows it down our viewpoint purposely. From there, I have decided to go beyond the appearance of the body.

During pandemics, I was in the middle of the path to digging the body into a wider realm of human experiences such as emotions and senses. Unlike the previous works that focused on the appearance and visual aspects of the body, from this point, I have more focused on the inner part of the body. The “Melt” is my last fashion project that involved artwork with the body. This stage is more focused on how emotions come out through the body. Emotions are revealed naturally through the body. But, at the same time. people try to hide their emotions from others. Since revealing emotions involve many things either personally or not. It can be a weakness. Therefore, people avert showing their emotions plainly. But especially, the sadness is hard to hide or ignore among the emotions. Here, I focus on expressing such aspects through the garment. I express How “I” react to the sadness with the body and how “general” people react to the sadness with the body. The most successful point in this stage is that since I tried to investigate and divide the body deeply, I could reach the deeper side of the thinking process. The body is all we have commonly. Through that, we communicate, touch, love, interact and feel. Especially, the feeling and senses which are related closely to our bodies are the most intriguing part to experience. Two things cannot be separated from us and are the essential part to live as human beings. By studying the body, I can realize how they are important to living and filling our lives. The process leads me in a deeper direction that where I want to go in the future.

From there, in particular, I am thinking of creating a work that reveals affection for humans, scrutinizing humanity such as emotions, senses, and memory. Here, I have started to investigate the human essence and the situation that surround us. In the process, I have realized that since we live in a world that increasingly becomes faster and wider with the virtual world, we still need human touch, interactions, and emotional communication in reality. If we cannot avoid the faster and more convenient world filled with more practical reason and mathematics, we need to secure our intrinsic features of being human: touch, thinking, sense, and emotions. This is the philosophy that I want to express as an artist and future generation to the world. I also appreciate that our technologies are sufficient to expand our quality of life, work environments, and society. But in the process, we need to think about how we can secure our own things - the specific memory we have, the senses we feel everywhere, the imagination that we can expand endlessly, and the direction where do we want to go with the consciousness. Why do we always miss small things? Through each unexpected discovery, we feel happiness. When we pass along the street and listen to a live concert from a stranger with music we like, we feel happiness. When we find the dish we like in a restaurant where we chose a random place, we feel euphoria. When we travel to and find the place where only we know, we feel satisfied. When we eat with someone we love, we feel hopefulness. Like these events, we gather happiness from very small things. But we easily disregard such moments because the rest of our lives often makes us frustrated and tired. Sometimes, our realities make us forget the small things rather than actively disregard them. But when we encounter such a moment, and we at least realize such a twinkling time makes us happy, we can reach happiness with a step. ‘Happiness’ is intangible and invisible, so we need to seek it out in our daily life.

‘Epiphany’ is the first step to visualizing my philosophy that securing the human touch and connection would remain in human society endlessly and delivered to the public. I want to show how our precious daily life is important, which is hidden right under our eyes – the life that we cannot always find easily, the daily, ordinary, and simple things that make us happy. If we miss our mundane life which has full of happiness, desire, future, memory, and moments, we will miss everything to live. We keep needing to think and remember what is important to us. As an artist who can expand the world around them with more beauty, I expand the chance for the viewers to think.

Only the vacant space allows to fill it. When we miss something, we can think, want, and look back. But what kind of life do we live now with the advent of various convenient technologies and services? It is said that humans are beings who love excess. But now we are buried in things that we cannot control and continue to live without knowing what we want. The information I don’t expect is constantly filling and teaching me. Technology constantly fills my needs and expectations. In other words, the service from the world all around us does not help us to think and create something by ourselves. Will our life be happy if we keep storing and stacking what we don’t know and we don’t want? Without asking questions, can we still say that we live our lives on our own? “What do I like? What music do I want to listen to? What lyrics and sentences make me cry? With whom do I want to be? What do I want to eat? and who do I want to have next to me?” Eventually, the reason why we are unhappy may be that we fill our time with things that we cannot decide on our own.

I want to give a chance to think about ourselves. I begin my project with a simple question “Who do you want to be with and what do you want to eat and drink?” Eating with someone is the easiest way to fill our emptiness and the most intrinsic value for us to live as human-being, but we disregard such preciousness in our daily life. Humans need a medium, a container to realize themselves. Eventually, the most effective way to discover and realize yourself is when you reflect on yourself through others. I suppose that we all share similar emotional turbulence, such as a feeling of emptiness when we compare ourselves with others.

I’ve divided the section to stimulate the viewer's emotion and memory. The first goal is to project a situation that can reflect the viewer themselves to awaken their heart and bring out their feeling on the surface. After they’ve gotten the answer from the experience, the second goal is to make the memories and emotions that came out into a material that can be put into their pockets, so that they don’t forget them in their daily lives. By helping them to use their senses, their memories are emphasized much more vividly and permanently. I use sound because hearing is related to emotional circuits, as well as smell, which is directly connected to the hippocampus (the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory).” In addition, by using interactive work that allows spontaneous participation, I promote their ability to remember. In other words, the viewers act to transform their memory and feelings (which are intangible things) into visible and tangible things. This action helps to stimulate their memory. Over time, the memory you pulled out from the exhibition - may go back below the surface, but in the end, you can recall the action you made, so you can naturally bring up the memories you pulled out in advance. To stimulate the viewer's emotions and senses specifically, I’ve tried to express very small details that have a connection with the message. The piece is made of beads because separation and dissociation are the essences of the material itself. The beads are gathered together and create a new shape. One bead cannot draw a new shape by itself. Just like beads, memory is also gathered with various emotions and fragments of senses. I hope its delicacy and fragments recall the intimate feeling. When the viewer interacts with the piece, they are connected to its delicacy. Its fragility shares similar aspects to our memories, moments, emotions, and stories. In addition, by using the seed beads as an interactive part, I also hope people handle them carefully like they do their own emotions. Colors share meaning with our memories visually, and they can help us to recall memories that have faded. The diverse colors of the beads themselves help to emphasize their feelings visually.

Through the journey, I’m going to get closer to the essential things of humanity. I hope people can realize that the happy moments that are always present in our daily lives will not be forgotten with my works. If we look around with our third eye, we can see a different world. The world is filled with various moments that we have not realized yet. I pray everyone can feel their emotions, senses, breathing, and story consciously. I will expand the boundary of the idea that I have explored, and it would my next direction.