Seoul, b. unknown

Floating Selves, a Solidarity of Resonance I do not trust the notion of a fixed self. Although the self is often defined in psychology as a unique and coherent identity, such a concept is fundamentally insufficient to capture the complexity and fluidity of the human inner world. Within the rapidly shifting currents of contemporary society, modern identity is continuously dismantled and dispersed, leaving us to drift through the world without a clear outline. In this process, fragile emotions are frequently fragmented, and coherent temporality and narrative lose their boundaries, often becoming powerless. Thus, the core and backdrop of my work is the visualization of the process through which incomplete beings of our time gather their own fragments—a “psychological safe zone.” This psychological safe zone is not a simple refuge where all pain and conflict are resolved, nor a complete utopia. Rather, it is a place where beings that remain incomplete choose confrontation over avoidance, flow over closure, and bear their own rhythms as they pause, exploring transformation and recovery. This space is realized as an unfamiliar and heterogeneous landscape inhabited primarily by anomalous life forms. These settings are not actual places but multidimensional spaces onto which inner sensations are projected—complex structures in which memory and imagination, fear and desire, are interwoven. The beings that appear possess organic, hybrid forms and identities that are never fixed. Figures wearing animal masks, unfamiliar beasts, and winged mammals all symbolize the fragmentation and reassembly of the self, actively driving their own narratives. Rather than isolating and defending themselves from the external world, they form spaces as open fields of relation where emotions and existence connect. Within these spaces, the self is once again experimented with, and resonance aligns itself with reality in solidarity. The beings that appear in the work carry no fixed meanings. They are less identities than possibilities of identity, or states that the artist senses within lived reality. Through these scenes, the viewer is invited not to find comfort or definitive meaning, but to enter an unstable condition reliant on sensation. Selves pass through intermediate points toward a more complete form of being. This is not a process of healing but of individuation—a provisional space that allows one to form personal boundaries through resonance with the surrounding world. This space does not seek to establish a private order, but to explore the very possibility of order itself. It is always precarious. Yet it is precisely within this precarity that the hope emerges that the self may finally be contemplated. “How far did the boundary extend before complete collapse, and in what form might it be rebuilt?” The work offers no clear answers. Instead, within landscapes that hold this question, beings continue to move and transform. I remain within this space.