2016Grand Prize
“What exactly is a homeland?”
As a Korean national living in Japan, this question was incomprehensible to me. However, it provoked a search for a homeland that began with living ethnic group traditions. Through my search, I discovered ‘somethings’ that should have been impossible for me to understand and, yet, I had always understood.
I collected these ‘somethings’ inside of me, and, as I pieced them together, a cohesive story emerged. These photographs contain things that form partial portraits of the people who appear in that story.
Entries form: Six 1000 x 800 prints (digital output / aluminum mounts / framed) Twelve A3 prints (digital output / matte)
Japan and Korea. Looking at the photographs we understand what it is to be engrossed by the question “Where is my home?” while lurching between two cultures. The photographs are an adhesive joining the cultures together. The work unifies two cultures into a single entity from the artist’s imagination, like a single sculpture, constructed from the photographs, expressing her own language, which is neither Japanese nor Korean.
The combination of characters, outfits, and objects she selected reminds us of the eternal cycle of reincarnation. The items also appear to pose a question, and being forced to ponder the nature of that question is beguiling. The work evokes the unresolved, ineffable, and shrouded problems that stand between Japan and Korea.
Born in 1981 in Kyoto
Graduated in 2005 from the Photography Course, Media Design Department, Seian University of Art and Design
Currently active as a photographer
2015: | Story at Art Space Niji, Kyoto |
2016: | Story at Art Space Niji, Kyoto |
2015: | Participated in the 50 Creators exhibition and talk show sponsored by Ours. Karigurashi Magazine at Open Muji, Muji Grand Front Osaka, Osaka |
2016: | Exhibited at the Art Court Frontier exhibition at Art Court Gallery, Osaka |
2016Grand Prize
(second photo from the left) Flowers by Atsunobu Katagiri, head of the Misasagi school of ikebana flower arrangement