JHU

Through feelings, evoked by playful visuals and objects such as insects, I deal with dark and serious social topics in my fine art and motion graphic works. For someone who cares and is cautious about what others are thinking, it is hard to distinguish myself from what I want and from what others want from me. Am I influenced by my surroundings much more easily than I imagined? Is it all right to be making “art for art sake” with no guaranteed outcome of money, status, or affirmation? These thoughts often wrap my wings and tie me down like an insect in a spider’s web. However, this fear is not real. I forget that my fear is self-created.

One day, after killing a cockroach, I looked closely at its wings. It was strange to think that a cockroach has wings. Why didn’t it use them? Why did it have to live its life in darkness on the floor when it could easily fly? Was its existence driven by fear? Wrapping its wings with fear, it no longer could fly. It was hiding away from its surroundings and people, lost in its own world. This reminded me of myself. I was not so different in being limited by fear. This event was an opportunity for me to be an artist for “my own sake.”

I use digital means to make my motion graphic works, however I’ve never seen a digital image that can express feeling from random and uneven texture like a real painting. As a result, I prefer to adapt hand-painted traditional images manipulated in the digital editing process, along with animated characters, and frame-by-frame animation techniques.  As a cockroach myself, I too realized that the burden on my back is not a burden, but wings. Now, I just have to start flapping my wings and fly into the light.