021 GALLERY, DAEGU (KR)
Little by little I become the past. The past is unfamiliar. Because it's different from what it is now, and it's interpreted again by the present. Many of these changes are hard to remember for me and hard to imagine for the next generation. The world I lived in is now a strange place. The past that is meaningful to me is what interacts with me and affects me now. I draw a 'foreign country', based on Burton Holmes filmed Joseon in Seoul: the Capital of Korea(1901), Wolmi Island during Japanese Colony(1920s), and the photos of The US Marines Landing in Incheonin LIFE(October 2, 1950). Images made with the camera preserve the past, including small parts, and motion pictures expand the senses by showing events from multiple perspectives. I use this to weave distant time and space into the fabric of present experience.
The Bridge, color and ink on linen, 116.8x80.3cm, 2021
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As the means of transportation have changed, the way of looking has also changed. The scenery reflected through the window of a moving train or the mirror of a car is fragmented by the frame. I look down through the airplane window as the US Marines land on Incheon. Outside the dock, I witnessed the sinking of a Russian ship. And I look at the girls swimming in the sunshine of Wolmido. The world I see is structured as if various frames were overlapped in space and time, and I wander in it. The pieces of stories, facts, photos, and old articles are spatially expanded and connected with my memory. I collect and unfold things that are silenced, pushed aside, or forgotten. In this way, I rearrange the traces of the past from a different perspective. For me, this ‘talking’ will be an alternative to calling back those who have been pushed aside, and it is a way for me to relate to the world.
The works in The Foreign Country(2022) say “I was far away” in the historical past tense. I look at the unfamiliar landscape like a traveler. Here I am like a ghost. I change the tense of the images, weave rough traces and incomplete memories to create my own story. To get to know yesterday where I live is to meet new meanings and possibilities here. I walk through a different time, talk freely about it, and move towards the future. In my own way, I wander in lost time, remember the times that did not respond, and draw a landscape of possibilities. _ BoMin Kim(2022)
