Migrants pack only what fits. Everything else is left behind: the trivial, the unmovable, the obsolete. As a migrant artist, I collect the discarded to construct an "architecture of memory" where multiple homes converge.
My work unfolds in two interwoven directions. I meticulously render domestic fragments from places once called home, reclaiming their presence through detailed realism. Joined in nonlinear arrangements, these paintings mirror a migrant consciousness where frequent relocation scrambles memory’s sequential logic. Distant places are held simultaneously—an Oregon Lamp (1992) meets a Minnesota Cabinet Pull (2007)—collapsing physical distance into a liminal, painted space.
Parallel to this, I layer maps, camouflage, and wallpaper to assemble surfaces that survey and conceal in equal measure. In my Map series, Google Maps of my childhood neighborhood in Seoul are woven into wallpaper patterns, camouflaged as decorative motifs. Due to South Korean security restrictions, this digital landscape has remained frozen since 2009, becoming an involuntary archive of a vanished past. By treating this censorship as a domestic pattern, I explore how the political reality of my homeland has become an inseparable fabric of my private memory.
Ultimately, my practice holds the tension between remembering and forgetting, capturing the point of saturation where accumulation threatens erasure.
eojaneteo@gmail.com