Homebody
Ink and pigment on hanji, stitched on indigo-dyed cotton
If you think about it, every shell you find on the beach is a home left behind.
I painted these shells as a meditation on the lives they once held. I wondered: if we were to look closer and consider each of the homes we have passed through, what might we find about where we’ve been and where we are going? Is any home truly left behind, or does “home” simply change form?
The diasporic experience will always be colored by a certain kind of yearning, and this movement from place to place, in search of home—like our little shelled friends.
Painted with ink and pigment on hanji, and stitched to cotton fabric dyed with Korean indigo, which is said to yield colors of sea and sky.
(Great)Grandmothers, And Me
Two bojagi. Korean pigment on hanji imprinted with thread, hemp cloth, and thumbprints. Hand stitched together with ramie, silk, and hemp cloth.
모르는게 너무 많지만 인사하고 싶다
Though there is so much I don’t know, I still want to greet you.
These two bojagi (Korean wrapping cloths made from scraps for the home) are hand stitched patchworks of hanji and fabric, threaded together by memory, and the inheritance of memory. One holds the singular stories I know about each of my (great-)grandmothers; the other is a self-portrait. Though I can never truly know these ancestors, still, we reach, and try to meet each other on the page.
Inspired by the resilience of hanji and its ability to remember shape and line, I wanted to see how much it could hold. Could it carry me, and the greeting I wanted to deliver? These paintings are of course meant to hang together, but no matter how far apart they are, they remain a continuous body, linked by the imprints of my own thumbprints and a single thread that might try to connect the un-connectable.
In form, they are as myriad as the ways in which memory moves: they dance, they fly, they hang still, they wrap, they hold. In the wind, they become kites. In the light, they become windows. In all matters, they offer only temporary glimpses, sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque.
Anchovy Studio
I run Anchovy Studio, an independent apparel and design brand inspired by the stories held in Korean folk arts and diaspora. To see more of our work in depth, please visit our website.