My Cultural Review
I was born as 3rd generation Korean-Japanese, have been raised in multi-cultural background. Despite my Korean-Japanese upbringing. I was sent to English speaking school since I was a child, and I was fortunate to learn 3 languages pretty much at the same time.
Probably due to my complex background. I had a chance to see and feel things in various point of view, and naturally juxtapose the things I see. Of course, having being raised from this sort of background was not always easy, but including good and bad, it certainly has enriched my expressions toward my artwork. During my art college years, I majored Graphic Design, but never compelled to become a serious designer. I guess what I was attracted to graphic design was not the idea of design itself, but the process of how it interacts with the viewer of communicating things, hence I was more interested in the conceptual side of the Graphic Art.
After many years, since I completed my studies in Graphics, I have been thinking what my love of my art is for. During my student years in London, I had a chance to explore the British contemporary arts and their raw culture, which introduced me to the introduction to the conceptual arts. As a student, I worked mostly on videos, but despite my interest towards moving images, I learned that my heart was on fluxus/avant garde/post modernism, subsequently I wanted to explore and experiment with many type of mediums to express the conceptual side of my work.
I got myself into photography, like many others who worked with videos/moving images, becomes affiliated to photography (or vice versa). The more I got myself into photography I saw why people who does video gets into photography (or other way around), just cause there are a lot of similarities between those two. There is something about peeking thru the camera finder. You get to see something personal from the everyday scenes on a different light. and discover something new, finding miracles from each different environment, which has its own story to be told.
Like the way I get inspirations with everyday paraphernalia, I like to encounter with destined accident or accidental fate?! (bit contradicting but when we regard people or life in general, when we were little we just take it as it is and do not question much about it, but as we grow older I felt life and people around us does not seem to make much sense) So my purpose of my creative process is to touch the part where people may normally see things everyday, but more or less have been overlooked or neglected (which is forgotten from our memory), or somehow became some sort of taboo or an enigma. I would not call myself or want to be pigeon holed as an media artist but open to “become” anything OR “infuse” anything thru’ various mediums that I may encounter. Hence, my work is more than just a self satisfaction, but tapping into my inner self to find the real purpose of who I am to be, and about to become.
