PARK MEJUNG | Still life for things that need a goodbye, Mourning, 2022

<Still life for things that need a goodbye, Mourning>

People live with numerous things throughout their lives. In the summer of 2018, I witnessed the finiteness of time in the by-products that resulted from a partial construction of our house, which we had shared for 11 years. Just as our human lives are finite, objects are also not eternal. This work began with beautiful mourning for the things that are easily consumed and discarded in our daily lives, which were once kept close to us as precious objects but are forgotten and disappear after their usefulness has run out. I created a three-dimensional sculpture by bringing the form, texture, and color of used objects to a small stage. I composed them by cutting out two-dimensional paper flowers from a flower picture book that I had kept for a long time. Paper flowers were used to express them as a symbol (means) of mourning. Also, in Vanitas still life, flowers also symbolize death, and the irony is that the paper flowers stuffed in the book exist as flowers that do not wither or change forever. Although the delicately drawn paper flowers are not alive, we tried to give them visual interest by giving them the illusion of being alive for a moment through reproducing them with a camera. Without reenacting any existing scenes, they encounter each other and become one composition like a fresh sensory experience freed from the elements of everyday life provided by the Dépaysment technique. With this,I bring them back onto the refined background and visualize them as an image of an untouchable plane. Additionally, the focus was on the overall harmony of the screen by using objects and background colors as aesthetic elements.

When I was a child, I used to play with paper dolls and imagine how I could dress them up by combining paper clothes that I had cut with scissors and how I could make them look pretty. Recalling the memories of that time, in this work, I wanted to touch and arrange the objects that had lost their purpose and the shapes of flowers transferred to non-living paper, decorate and mourn the soon-to-be-depleted objects beautifully, and leave them forever in a photograph. In this process, their senses, including the sense of touch, which reminded me of their entity, seemed to be further strengthened. Like Roland Barthes' play of presence and absence, which captures an object that existed in a photograph and makes it live forever in it, my act is to perform a photographic ritual and re-discover the value of old and obsolete objects as works of art. I wanted to try it and have it placed back with us forever as a beauty in a photo. Between before and after use, reality and representation, optical illusion and manifestation, my senses travel slowly.

BIO

After majoring in art education at Hanyang University's College of Education, she completed the International Fashion Research Institute, she won the grand prize at the College Student Design Contest in Korea as a student. She later worked as a stylist for commercial commercials, fashion magazines, and broadcasts. She was a full-time fashion director at Ecole Charmant, Face Value, Juad B, Ipoh Makeup Sch ool, and gave lectures on fashion styles at several companies, including Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung C&T. She completed the Chung-Ang University Photography Academy.