Artist’s Statement

    My work explores human relationships: how connections are forged, what strains them, how they fall apart.  In South Korea, where I grew up, many families are separated by war, and their histories are marked by long separations and more recently, reunions.  My experience with these issues on a cultural level continues to affect my work.

    In South Korea my work had focused on socio-political issues in the places around me, but after I moved to the United States, my work began to turn inward.  I became estranged from the familiar context of home and country and my roles as family member, as citizen.  This led me to create some artworks to question my changing roles and my future path.  I began a series of installations, videos and performances, searching through my memories and recurring dreams for what I had kept of myself.

    While each of my projects explores a different concept, the idea of longing permeates my every work.  Thinking of our constant search for something we have lost—a person, a place, a particular time in our lives—I created a tactile interface to provoke anonymous affection between two people (Free–contact (2008)).  In another project, No Bridge Travels from Man to Man (2010), I depicted fragile human relationships by stretching translucent fabric between picture frames on opposing walls to create virtual bridges between people.

    My work is an ongoing effort to clarify, to make real, feelings and ephemeral ideas.  It is not work with an end, or even a destination, but something I must do because it brings me closer to those answers.