The Beach under the Skin_Wadong

Artist's note

It is an artistic reinterpretation of labour at the "Yeongdo Kangkangee Village" in Busan, Korea's first modern shipyard village. The artist was born and spent her childhood to find her unique sensibility. The ship repair shops in Yeongdo use grinders to remove barnacles and other obstructions before painting the ship. This is called 'Kangkangee'. The stained surface of the old ship, together with the large amounts of dust and noise that the artist when she was very young experienced permeated into the memories and rhythms of her body and became a big part of his sensibility. The artist directly grounded and revealed the layers and depth of surface that have been accumulated underneath the old walls of the art museum and the gallery with the " Kangkangee." Then she swept the wall dust like the beach and titled the artwork "The Beach Under the Skin," affirming her unique aesthetic roots. For the 2021 Gangwon Triennale, the artist provides the experience of touching the old painted wall in the old Wadong Elementary School hallways to reveal the emotions and memories permeated in the heartbeat of the children who used to run around these hallways.

Introduction

Getting inside the Wadong branch school building, you can see an abstract painting on the wall next to the front door. If you come closer, you will notice that it’s not a painting, but a painted wall ground with a grinder. The wall was painted several times in different colors over the years. Subject to slow grinding, different parts of the wall reveal different layers of paint; surface layer, two or three different layers of paint, and a completely bare wall. Fine ground paint was gathered and placed on one corner, like a sand beach. Then, you realize the meaning of the title.