The pain of water is endless.
- Gaston Bachelard ‘Water and Dreams’
The ongoing project ‘YOJI’, which has started with the 16mm analog film, is an attempt to recreate the childhood traumatic memory of the artist, who witnessed a woman walking slowly into the sea as if she was trying to take her own life. Since then, the artist has been agonizing about the anxieties towards human mortality and the relationship between a female body and water.
'YOJI’
(瑤池), in ancient Chinese mythology, is the name of a fantasy lake located between the world of mortals and immortals, owned by the great goddess of life and death, Seo-Wang-mo(西王母,
Xi-wang-mu). Water has, throughout various culture and literature, often symbolized purification, reverie, the passage to death, and feminine nature. Humans born from the water created by the female body eventually flow into the water through the ground. Was it the woman who is going into the water, or the water encroached upon her? The scene that the artist witnessed penetrates into her life and flows to the anthropocenic pre-trauma.
