Watercolor and mineral pigment on silk.

Statement

I used to picture life simply as becoming an adult, getting old and then passing away, but it turned out to not be so predictable. Around July 2021 when the lockdown was imposed, in my vague memory of survival, what remains are the images of barb wires from the barricades, the sound of ambulances roaming the empty streets carrying with them the lives forever stuck in those moments. In a time of modernity, omnipotent science and medical advancement that deem "superstition" obsolete, we were helpless in the sudden grip of the pandemic. As it recedes, personal events and memories fade, only to be replaced by a thing called collective memory, in the name of a nation. We are asked to be silent, to go on living as the truth is being slowly erased until it disappears, as if never existed. Amidst the contemporary noises, I am painting a self-image of mine that has been assimilated with the collective-ness, in which the hair is braided, connected and continued into an infinity of other-ness. I want to portray that alleged collective memory as the memories of those burdened by actual existence. And because faith can bring about a prospect, I want its miracle, mystery and sacredness to return. Faced with the uncertainty of life, I hope that my art can be a prayer to fill the void of loneliness and isolation, in the space where personal voices are overwhelmed by mandates, where memories of life and death are complicitly abandoned.

Statement is excerpted from “Assemblage: Me, my story and I" Exhibition Booklet, 2023, p.39.