E u a r c h o n t a O f L o v e

In 2020 I relocated back to my hometown in China from Seoul, Korea. This isolated area kept me far from civilization. I found myself often walking alone on the banks of the river that ran through our town. Day after day I felt a growing love and connection to the soil. While I experienced this dramatic disconnect, I found strength and comfort as my fingers penetrated the soil. The connection was foreign to me, an indistinguishable aura that entranced me.

I dove deeper into my contemplations on this novel experience and recalled an ancient Chinese legend known as the Nuwa where men were made of clay. The connection to the Earth also reminisces with the iconic land works by performance artist Ana Mendieta, the lack of body in a relationship between humankind and the natural world. Yet, this is not what I felt. It was truly Mother Nature. There was an instinctual inherent bond and love I experienced as if I was a daughter of the Earth herself. I began to translate all these references I had encountered in my own life into my own understanding, and personal relationship, with an emotional matrix between the earth and the human soul.
My work explored these connections in relation to clay. I reconciled the mythological notion that humans spawned from the clay itself with my own philosophy regarding the flawed nature of humanity. In this sense, clay is not an external material but an internal one. It represents where we came from, who we are, and where we will return. Through the act of using clay as a means to wash one’s face, I expose how we attempt to heal in superficial, and often more damaging, ways that do not address the core of our issues.

The other images in the series reveal me in a prop suit amongst various landscapes. In this costume, my vision and other senses are diminished. I am tightly bound by the fabric so that my limbs seem to move autonomously from my consciousness. Amongst nature, I begin to act purely on instinct. I forget that I am me. I become an entity that exists and moves only as part of the mist-stained morning, the empty beach, or tranquil river bed. In these performative actions I have documented, viewers watch me transform from the puppet of modernity into a crawling primitive being of the Earth.