Every moment of daily life holds mixed emotions within it - Heya
Every moment of daily life holds mixed emotions within it
by Heya
I aspire to be an artist who explores ambivalent emotions. Before delving into this theme, I would like to share how my interest in such subjects began.
"A woman turns into a plant on her apartment balcony, and the man she lives with plants her in a pot." This is how author Han Kang describes "The Fruit of My Woman" in the author's note at the end of her novel "The Vegetarian." This single sentence revealed the depths of my own lethargy—the image of a person lying helplessly in bed, transforming into a plant, resonated deeply with me.
This led me to develop an interest in urban plants. As someone who habitually took photographs for my paintings, plants naturally became subjects of my photography. I began to notice plants thriving in the harsh urban environment, such as those growing in the crevices of concrete. In 2023, during my research on urban plants, I further observed their resilience.
However, the primary reason I couldn't continue focusing solely on the 'fragile and powerless' aspects was likely due to a change in my own mindset. After taking medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder for several years, I became a considerably more positive person. I felt more energetic and spent less time lying in bed as I had before. Consequently, between 2023 and 2024, I created works that encapsulated both vulnerability and strength.
Reflecting on 'weak and strong' entities led me to contemplate ambivalence. A phrase I am fond of is 'happy-sad,' a line from director John Carney's film "Sing Street." I prefer emotions that are simultaneously joyful and sorrowful, rather than those that are purely one or the other. This inclination likely stems from my childhood and adolescent experiences.
During my early years, although we were well-off, our household was often filled with loud arguments, and I would often find myself crying alone in my room. Curiously, many of our relatives also seemed to exhibit more signs of unhappy families than happy ones. However, I never considered my childhood to be unhappy. Even during the years my parents were divorced, I always felt loved. I was a child who cried often but was also happy.
Leaving behind the affluence of my early years, our family's financial situation declined during my adolescence, making us decidedly working-class. My mother used to say, 'When you're poor, fights are unending,' and I grew up among neighbors where this seemed true, spending much of my teenage years and half of my twenties in such an environment. Always living in my own world, it wasn't until my mid-to-late twenties that I fully recognized my circumstances and felt a sense of shame. I wanted to escape that environment. Yet, every time I moved through our modest and somewhat impoverished neighborhood, I simultaneously felt an endless affection for it.
Perhaps I am someone who finds warmth in lacking things.
In my paintings, I tend to favor colors that aren't overly vivid, and there's a reason for this. As the youngest with two much older brothers, I was raised almost like an only child. Additionally, frequently moving between Africa and Korea left me with few friends. Sensing my loneliness, my father bought me a gaming console and often brought home videotapes. I watched a range of animations and films from the 1950s and '60s Disney classics to those from the 1990s. Even while in England, my father set up a small TV in my room, allowing me to immerse myself in British broadcasts late into the night.
The commonality among these experiences is that they all involve visual media with somewhat faded colors compared to today. These images have lingered within me for a long time, naturally influencing the color palettes in my paintings. Many events from my childhood are intertwined with the hazy images of the animations and films I watched during that period.
I believe that these experiences are not unique to me. Everyone has likely had moments that were both joyful and sorrowful, and those experiences are stored somewhere in their hearts. I aim to express these ambivalent emotions that people have tucked away. I hope that viewers of my paintings do not dwell solely on the hardships of life's ups and downs. Upon reflection, even in difficult and painful times, there were moments of joy. I wish for my art to serve as a medium that reminds them of that.
