The collaboration piece of Jeong Hoe Jin and my exhibition, Beyond Dialogue. The original concept of the exhibition was being inspired by each others home countries, how I feel about South Korea and Hoe Jin feelings towards the UK and creating pieces inspired by that. But then we realised that it would be more impactful and meaningful if it was expressing the idea of what home means to us. Home isn’t necessarily the structure that we sleep in but it can also be a feeling. And so we came up with this.
Imagine the set of three pieces without the red lines and patterns on the red line, that was a piece Hoejin had created years ago, in his eyes, it felt finished but it felt like it was missing something. The details are so subtle on this piece, it is black Hanji stuck down on canvas, with a liquid lightener to create the delicate patterns seen within the canvas. In using this technique you can see fish like shapes including scales and fins. The reason for this is because his feeling of home was when his Grandmother would grill fish and peel off the skin, the burnt, dark texture I believe was captured beautifully in this.
Because of this, I had to be very careful with the placement of my addition to the painting. I decided to use Dancheong in this painting.
I used Dancheong because the pillars of the palaces that have the designs hold a structure up, just like a home, a home should be something that is held upwards and over your head to protect you. Because of the personal relationships of Hoejin and his grandmother, I wanted to include the idea of the red string soul tie. A soul tie is a belief that people are connected to each other by red string and I want to represent this in the image through the pillars. Sometimes the feeling of home is not necessarily a building but a connection with somebody.
