King Lear’s outcry is still heard (King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4).

An angel avatar with black wings and my self, praying in military uniform - all express the ironies in human life conditions. Just like the king is expelled from his throne, humans are alienated by their own creations. In reality, where humans are depicted in machine forms and avatars in human forms, humans get lost, not because there is no way, but because there are too many ways. There is no difference between getting lost in the wilderness and amid skyscrapers.

When the realization strikes you that your wish has betrayed you, what outcry can you emit?

 

Who am I? ; Hurt My Heart 1min. 24" vimprogector& camcorder installation/gallery phill in Seoul Feb. 2005

Who Am I? 3: Sound and Fury.

1min 45" single video installation on monitor. 2003

“[Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)

Identity or self-awareness is sometimes amorphous in modern society. Images and sounds abound and are overflowing all around, and individual selves are drowning amidst them, failing to take form, failing to be given a name. The avatar in cyberspace in the twenty-first century is a reverberation of Shakespeare of 400 hundred years ago.

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My art is my self. How my art has developed reflects my personal growth. My art gained expression when my cocoon-like self learned to reach out for others and to bridge the distance between others and me. At first, my art was an outlet for me to breathe when I was a young girl under a stubborn and authoritative father, but over time, it developed in conjunction with my own personal development and growth.

Like most Korean youths, college was the first place for me to explore my independent identity. Thus, most of my work during my undergraduate years was about myself, desperately looking for my identity as an adult. I felt attracted to spatial images at first because the first step of my growth was like escaping from a small space to the wider world. At first, I mainly worked on actual physical spaces and moved on to the virtual space created with video film, and to cyberspace. These spaces are much larger and address more dimensions, and they gave me more room to explore. In these spaces, I came across many different people, who were hurt or saddened, and I began to wish that I could comfort them with my work.

My college graduation work was the culmination of my journey of my self, and is entitled, “Who Am I?” While this work signifies the years of my attempts to build my identity, the process directed me to a realization that my identity lies in my relationships with others, that one cannot be himself or herself alone, and that one’s identity can be found in the interface with others. After this realization, my work began to orient itself to others, and my master graduation work was “Hurt My Heart.” This work represents my hand extended to others. It reflects my belief that my life’s meaning comes about when my heart reaches out to others, and my work gains its meaning when it comforts others. I understood that I need to leave blank space in me for others to fill in.






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I look at my cocooned self. I have a fragile self, inside, that refuses to grow and chooses to stay secure in a small space. I consciously break shells to set myself free, to overcome stagnancy.

I am always attracted to cocoons or eggs. They represent the most secure spaces in the world that I can escape into. I feel the impulse to hide in that secure space whenever I feel hurt by the world, and I started to take an interest in the space, in particular, the most complete and independent space, in a cocoon.

However, I cannot but deconstruct the cocoons for the sake of my growth, because locking myself in, means locking others out. Escaping into a cocoon, after all, is an attempt to return to the womb.

Breaking cocoons, thus, became a rite of passage to me. It was the first step I took toward my adulthood.




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Cyberspace is another space I found. The anonymity and freedom gives me an outlet, where I can do what is impossible in reality.

I replicated my self in cyberspace, built a house for my avatar, and started to talk with it. By copying reality in cyberspace, instead of creating unrealistic images, I could re-create reality and keep an objective distance from it.

The avatar work was very time-consuming and monotonous, but the repeated editing, cutting and pasting to make it like a film totally engaged me. It all represents conversation with my self, but by securing a distance between the virtual reality and real reality, the realities mirror and strengthen each other; I am able to see my self in the recaptured reality of the cyberspace.

Who am I? ; Play Inside The Place 2min. 27" DV on monitor. 2002 exhibition mute / gallery phill in Seoul Feb. 2005



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Who Am I? 2: We Are Many; But We Are All Alone.

3min 15" multi screen installation on monitors. 2002

Avatars are deconstructed selves in cyberspace. They represent human reality as it is - studying, watching TV, going to the bathroom and cooking. They multiply by turning up on the screen one by one or two by two. Each avatar is alone in his own space – they are alienated from each other.

In reality, we are restricted by physical space, and cannot see others who exist alone. However, cyberspace enables us to have a bird’s-eye viewpoint, a place where we can look at others all separately. At this point, cyberspace is not a mere representation of reality; it re-captures reality, presents it under a new light, and helps restore reality that is sometimes on the verge of collapsing into physical alienation.

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