Pressure of all Attentions on Me

I did not expect self-reflection would be so hard. Continuously focusing on myself, I locked myself in a darkest box. At first, I was not able to escape from bog called memoires; and now I am not free from other’s gaze.

Before I was working on the second art series called ‘Welcome to the Pitch-Grey Area,’ there was the first series ‘Resenting Memories’ using my memories as the main theme. Memories are not exchangeable or tradeable assets. They are only faded away by being forgotten; till they are fully forgotten, they are always around you, being something that brings you happiness, or the opposite. I was away from my hometown to the UK for an educational purpose for 7 years. I had psychologic disease, that I miss certain places and time. Naturally I started to forget and not to distinguish what is real and fantasy. However, there is a certain time that brings me to reality – sunset. When the sun sets is my most favourite time. By seeing the red and orange paints graduating to black at the horizon I could rephrase my thoughts and empty them.

From the end of 2019, I started to watch and evaluate myself who isolated by myself. While works from the first series shows the beauty of landscapes with sunset vividly, works of the second series would be darker, and more philosophical then before. I determined to go in further to see who I really am, who trapped in one of darkest room, feeling unease derived from others’ attentions.

Nowadays people can easily share their thoughts on someone like famous stars or even a random person, given more chances to see their personal bubbles by TV, SNS, or on the Internet. Their shared thoughts can be so rude with excuses such as some people are not their type or they make others so jealous without reasonable excuses, not being respectful to the differences of own personality and life-patterns. In my opinion, the society of South Korea has really strong culture mentioned just before which is wrong; many people in South Korea thinks our own community is more important than individual. So, people just cannot accept people with strong personality or characters naturally and easily, yet, which is why I think yet everyone feels quite hard to show their own unique personality yet. This phenomenon is shown as a box that I am locked in. The box also means the gaze and the criterion of a certain society. The box also contains my hope not to hear any insults by adjusting myself to the society standard and the expectations from people around me to do so.

I strongly feel regretful that I did not take care of myself, sensing other’s sharp gazes giving pressures to be like others. The second series would show the journey of myself decorating and managing my world to be unique. For me, every attention and gaze is like a threat, giving some uncomfortable feelings. This makes me sensitive and defensive, giving a lot of thoughts of how I am criticized or thought. As I assume that dark places are good for hiding from anything – in this case, from gaze - so I painted the box black. By presenting my works with my pride, not only I am to show my journey, but also I want to ask all of you and give some time to have a thought if you insist others to adjust to your own standard, or on the social or cultural phenomena of imposing invisible manual of who you must be.