Fine Art Projects
우리글 한글 Our Language, Hangul
Spring 2016
Language in Shadows: A Reflection on Heritage & Time
This installation explores language as both material and immaterial heritage, emphasizing its vulnerability to loss, evolution, and reinterpretation. Laser-cut wooden letters, glued together and suspended from a tree, interact with their environment—casting fleeting yet persistent shadows that echo the resilience of language over time.
The interplay between the sculpture, light, and landscape underscores the fragility of cultural heritage, while the shadows’ transience symbolizes the ever-shifting relationship between the past and present.
🔨 Medium: Laser-cut Masonite wood
✨ Themes: Lost cultural heritage, Time & memory, Transience, Environmental interaction
📍 Exhibited at: Wellesley College – Academic Quad & Korean Department Office
Corpse Flower
2014
Inspired by the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum)—a rare bloom at The Huntington Library in Los Angeles, where I volunteered throughout high school—this piece explores the contrast between inner and outer beauty.
From afar, the Corpse Flower is strikingly beautiful and vibrant, but up close, it emits an overwhelming, pungent odor—challenging conventional perceptions of beauty.
I constructed the flower using cutouts of commercialized beauty symbols—cosmetics, fashion, and luxury items—shaping them into the form of the bloom. This juxtaposition questions: What is beauty? Is it only what we see? Can we look beyond surface-level appearances to recognize deeper truths?
Memento mori — a reminder that beauty fades, but essence endures.
🏆 Awards:
- Scholastic Art & Writing Award – National Silver Medal (2015)
- Scholastic Art & Writing Award – Gold Key, Mixed Media Category (2015)
🔨 Medium: Magazine cutouts, glue, acrylic paint
Tongue-Tied
Summer 2013
Shaped like a gramophone with a knotted tongue, this piece expresses the frustration I felt as a child adjusting to a new culture and language. It captures the irony of having a voice but feeling unable to fully articulate myself—thoughts and emotions caught in translation, tangled before they could be spoken.
🔨 Medium: Scrap Wood, Cardboard, Plywood, Yarn 📏 Dimensions: 37”x24"x24”
📍 Created at UCLA Summer Art Institute
2014