June 5, 2013

Jung Eun Park

Happy 1 and 2, Pencil, thread, watercolor, coffee on Korean paper

In my quest to feel more comfortable with being away from home. I have been enjoying the work of Jung Eun Park, a lovely Korean artist who now lives and works in New York. Her artists statement on her website could have been written for me. Most of her work is about missing home…

Missing Home

missing:
1. lacking, absent, or not found
2. to disappear, become lost

home:
1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family or household.
2. the place in which one’s domestic affections are centered.
3. a person’s native place or own country.
4. the dwelling place or retreat of an animal.
5. the place or region where something is native or most common.
6. (in games) the destination or goal.

Mostly my work has been about a relationship with my mother since I moved to New York and being separated from my family in a long distance. It became interests about a difficulty of communication, a fear of unconnected relationship and a burden of being an independent person. I express my mentality caused by these problems with symbolic objects, human body and red thread in my drawing.

Jung Eun Park

I realise that for me – home is where my family is. But it’s very different for everyone isn’t it? Not the same for my boyfriend at all. Home is wherever his house and work are. Which I think is great and must be much easier to move around to different places. What’s your idea of home? Anywhere you are? Somewhere near a beach? Mountains? Friends? Work? Interesting, I never really thought of a definition for home specifically before, I just thought it was a general feeling you get after being in one place for a while. I guess you could go a lot deeper and talk about general life satisfaction too, but we’ll leave that for another time (phew!)