Can art reconnect us to intimate yet inaccessible periods and places?
As a migrant drifting without a permanent address, I document in my artwork the places I once considered home. Driven by a sense of loss and longing, I have developed methods to summon memories of residences into the present. I transform the canvas into a conceptual space where the past haunts by applying house paint, wallpaper patterns, and Google Maps imagery. In my paintings, wallpaper patterns traced from a blurry family photo merge with Google Maps of my childhood home, which hasn’t been updated since 2009. My work creates a dialogue between times and spaces, as the digital image freezes a fleeting moment of physical space.
My artistic practice embodies the disorientation and fragmented identity caused by nomadic life. I interweave my discontinuous memories with my grandfather's refugee experiences during the Korean War. Personal and historical images are stacked covering one another; the painting eventually becomes illegible, reaching a saturation point where no more can be added. Drawing from my Korean roots, I use maps and camouflage patterns in my work to reflect Korea's long history of military dictatorship that severed indigenous traditions and forced westernization, coexisting like two sides of a coin. Through these visual elements, my paintings demonstrate the erasure, randomness, redundancy, and longing that emerge from the process of remembering. It ultimately highlights migrant identity oscillating between remembrance and oblivion.
eojaneteo@gmail.com
@eojanet