Installation view of 《Son’s Time 1/2》 (The Museum of Korean Modern Literature, 2022) © Jihye Park

《Son’s Time 1/2》 began from a curiosity about how and to what extent social conflicts can be reconciled through “small gestures of care.” In the non-face-to-face era, where various services and systems replace even the most trivial aspects of human life, we seem to have gained the freedom of avoidance or isolation.

However, when it comes to relationships we have never chosen yet inevitably must confront—family—a different kind of tolerance emerges. Even while knowing that differences cannot be narrowed, we secretly hope for shared feelings; I thought that the tempering of contradictory emotions within these sticky relationships—ones that cannot be softened or severed—has been the driving force sustaining a history filled with foolish mistakes and regrets.


(left) Jihye Park, My Island, 2022, Wood, duct tape, hardware, Dimensions variable / (right) Jihye Park, Your Castle, 2022, Fabric, resin, cement fragments, Dimensions variable © Jihye Park

For this work, I visited and observed areas located on the margins of urban order, where people must resolve the inconveniences of life on their own. To say that one must deal with a situation by any means necessary also means that somehow it can be done. If one is placed in an environment where one must actively claim one’s life, might one not become more proactive in expressing personal taste and values?

Thus, rather than defining locality, this research focuses on human nature that becomes more visible precisely because it is close at hand. The act of discovering and recombining expressions of care and concern scattered in one’s own way within the deep valleys of misunderstanding—valleys deepened by the distance of relationships—constitutes the first part of the 《Son’s Time》 diptych. / Text: Jihye Park

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