2015
Video installation, Performancee
wax, candle
in A&D Gallery at the Hansung University
Seoul
26 minutes
An Interest in 'Peeling'
This interest in 'peeling' began with a shocking and incomprehensible experience involving my grandmother and paraffin. While living with her, she constantly suffered from severe back pain. One day, she asked me to pour very hot candle paraffin onto her back, but I refused. A few days later, I broke my finger and had to undergo physiotherapy using hot paraffin for healing.
As an intuitive performance, hot paraffin is applied to my face, covering it, and then melted away with a candle, resembling a ritualistic process of pain or self-inflicted injury as I empathize with my grandmother. During this process, the transformation of the face becomes visible. Through the performance, a sensation of joy, liberation, or relief from life's burdens, difficulties, or pressures emerges.
The broken finger could not move normally—it moved unintentionally, with the knuckles trembling instead of bending. As new skin grew over the fractured finger, the old skin continuously peeled off, resembling a snake shedding its skin to grow.