About The Exhibition

As a whole, my work is crafted from different aspects of my own life. My experiences have molded me into who I am today, and I feel that art has allowed me to understand myself and my surroundings more definitively. Therefore, my creative work centers on the overarching theme of identity and femininity.

My identity saturates throughout my portfolio. A large part that has influenced who I am today is my environment. Transitioning to a new country made me lose sight of who I am, but in the end, it has also strengthened and shaped me. It awakened me to believe that art is the form of how I want to express myself and my struggles.

The idea of change and fluidity is something I want to emphasize in my portfolio because of my ephemeral surroundings and experiences. My background is unique to myself, filled with uncertainty about where I stand in my Korean heritage. However, moving from Ontario to Seoul has allowed me to see two completely different settings and societies which have definitely made me a more thoughtful and open-minded person. Through art, I have come to terms with the difficulties of adapting but embracing change as I found a deep appreciation for the culture in South Korea.

Another key focus of my portfolio is femininity. Art has allowed me to explore my physical features with noticeable flaws, allowing me to eventually come to terms with them. The most considerable insecurity that I have battled with is having eczema. My hands became literally the root of the problem that couldn’t be detached from my itchy sensitive skin. Also, by studying the female figure, I have been able to familiarize myself with various body types and shapes. Seeing different curves and ridges has allowed me to find beauty and comfort in drawing bodies, willing me to see similarities and appreciate differences between the torsos I have drawn in my artwork to my own.

Studying the physical structure of hands has also allowed me to take on a different view from my previous one. Although I villainized them throughout my art pieces for causing unsightly rashes to my body, seeing their delicate forms in action as well as the volume of expressions they can convey has made me divert my thoughts. 

The artwork in my portfolio connects back to my appreciation for Korean culture and my physical identity. Learning to live in contrasting environments while growing to understand myself, socially and physically, has definitely come with some struggles. However, through it all, art has been the constant in which I got to express those internal struggles, bestowing me the time to self-reflect and overturning views from disfavoring to pleasant.

I was inspired by my own country’s traditional patterns on the torso sculpture. The simplified bold flowers and clouds have made me fall in love with Korea’s intricate palace designs. Not only that, but the country’s beautiful geography of beige rugged mountains have also made it into my artwork. The portraits on the right wall of my exhibition are also friends who are all half Korean to show those who are literal mixes of two cultures, ethnicities, and histories. This representation of Korea’s culture and physical features is how I incorporated my identity into my work. 

I intended to divide my exhibitional space into 3 separate walls. The wall on the far left is a collection of portraits from my artwork “Gyre”. Combining it with the photo “Borders”, I intended to make this the digital aspect of my exhibition. Both projects question identity and ambiguity in an obvious way. The center portion of my exhibition is where all the 3D sculptures are placed. They are the most eye-catching pieces. Viewers can see, based off of the biggest pieces, the recurring subjects of hands and torsos in my artwork. If the theme of identity and femininity is not obvious enough from this, I hope that people will understand my intention through the last wall on the right, which portrays familiar faces of people in our own school community.

While my artwork is on display to express myself to others, it is also a reflecting period for myself. Because I felt growth from my own projects, I don’t mind if the intent is obscure to others. I hope to continue to use art as a way of self reflection in the future past my high school life.