I often find my father asleep on his couch. I hear sermons on Truth by evangelical pastors on a Korean television channel. My mother listens, too, while obsessively washing the dishes as if she is cleansing her own regrets. The house plants thrive with daily care lavished upon them by both my mother and father. I feel as though a small section of my grandmother’s garden has been planted inside of my living room.
Why is it that I gravitate toward old, destroyed garments? Is it that the only way I know how to redeem such destruction through the cutting of these garments is by way of a mere installation that I have deemed ‘sentimental’? I cannot quite understand how this act of cutting might resolve itself. Garments are obsessively cut with scissors for hours. Perhaps I am trying to visualize the hours of rituals in remembering the past and acknowledging the present… beckoning and reconciling something from within myself through a transformative act in the making.
I kiss the houseplants, emulating the adoring care they have received from the ones who bore and raised me. I whisper the prayers my parents taught me, hoping for my own regrets to wash away. I watch and I listen. I fall asleep, savouring every word, sound, and image- allowing them all to converge as a poetic panorama, rather than an aching reality.
- Gyun Hur
come and join me tomorrow.
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