Counting Shadows Blackens My Fingertips

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Pigment Print on Mulberry Paper, From 11x16.5 inches To 40x60 inches, Printed in 2020, Edition of 5

땅으로 기운 가지의 가시가 단단해졌다.

새벽 숲, 날숨의 김이 하늘로 난다.

풀벌레들은 지난 밤새 모두 흙이 됐다.

커다란 나뭇잎이 배를 열고 죽은 산돼지 곁에 떨어진다.

울었을까, 울었겠지.

차갑게 젖은 땅의 색을 입고 풍경이 고요히 내려앉는 사이,

사라진 아이들은 세상을 넘어 계속 오르고 오른다.

Pigment Print on Mulberry Paper, From 11x16.5 inches To 40x60 inches, Printed in 2020, Edition of 5

At the scorched field in the village, the ash seeped into the soil with each rain and the winter gusts snatched at the reeds. There was a bone. The death of the animal was white. Crows were crying. Perhaps they witnessed it and came for the body. She passed away. Father informed me about her condition a day before her death. The tragedy was standing on. She had been in the coma. Her body was here but her mind had drifted somewhere else.

I walked in the woods in the dawn after meditation. The frozen night came to a harsh landscape, and the quiet mountains turned into a spiritual place in the sudden transition of climate. During the hike, the strangeness from the absence of life overwhelmed me by the lack of sensory experience. Frankly, this condition of absence brought a vivid memory of what existed in this place and an intensive presence of them.

I started to have a question, whether the existence can be defined by a form of life and death since I saw the fragility of life and its boundary when I had encountered my family members in the coma. And I had realized the paradoxical presence after the lives vanished in mountains by the frost and fire.There was a fearful emptiness and at the same time, a silent comfort. The lack of reality I felt triggered me to imagine a phase in between life and death and the world beyond the existence. I began capturing a pervasive sense of temporarily and mystery in a place that was both familiar and alien. From the raw state of nature, I observed the unknown forms of existence and the metaphoric gesture of the link between the absence and presence of being.

들리던 것들이 들리지 않았다.

들러붙던 것들이 들러붙지 않았다.

보이지 않던 것들이 사라졌다.

내려다보이는 곳은 전보다 가라앉아 보였다.

보이지 않던 것들이 남긴 자국을 물끄러미 바라보았다.

조금 슬퍼졌다.

올려다보아도 보일 리 없는 곳으로 사라진 그들이 자꾸 떠올랐고 떠오른 생각에 마음이 무거웠다.

그들을 위하여 무언가를 하지 않으면 안 될 것만 같았다.

내가 당시 할 수 있는 것은 계속하여 사라지고 드러나는 것들과 마주하고 바라보며 남기는 일이었다.

무엇이라 부르면 사그라지는 그것들은 희미했고, 그것들은 어두울 때 선명해지기도 했으며 선명해진 것들은 밝아져 희미해지기도 했다.

내가 다가간다고 가까워지는 것도 아니었고 떨어진다고 멀어지는 것도 아니었다.

하지만 줄곧 닿아 있다는 느낌이었다.