Through the Looking Glass I Print

My work explores the idea of personal identity through investigations of the space between dream and reality as a parallel to my experience with the colliding cultures of South Korean and the United States of America. I felt the cultural gap in many ways: not just a different language, but also different ways of thinking and seeing. The world around me is changing too quickly, which makes me difficult to keep up with the changes. Trying to follow the changes, I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. Now, I am looking for myself through my dreams in artworks. My artworks are the history/trace of my travel to find myself in an unfamiliar space. All of my works contain my images, in the form of boundary, time-cruiser, and dreams. As a boundary, I started to divide my world into familiar and unfamiliar circumstances. I was confused about my identity and I lost my way to think. Therefore, in my early works, my identity existed between the subconscious and conscious space in my mind. As time went on, I found myself in the daily life of an unfamiliar environment. I realized that I adapted myself to confusion. I seemed to have a good time but I actually isolated myself from a strange environment. At this time, my works contained my daily life and surroundings with unexcited manners. Finally, I wanted to break out my shells and meld myself with “my” environment. These eager took the form of animals, flowers and sometimes cultural symbols and small items in daily life. I exist in many works. Sometimes I play in my common and unusual surroundings, and sometimes I become a silent observer. I also exist in both dream and reality. In my latest works, the boundary of dream and reality become faded and the dream finally becomes the reality, which is what I dreamed about. I have been a traveller and I think I started to find an answer now. I am still on the travel to find myself and will keep going to find answers in my artworks.