IN GRAY
Upon returning to Korea, the home I once knew, I discovered that I no longer belonged there. Too many years had passed; memories had faded, and the place I carried within me had changed. Yet in the United States, the place I now call home, I did not belong there either. An outsider in both worlds, I wandered in-between—a gray area.
"In Gray" contemplates what it means to have two homes, yet never fully belong to either. Each series of photographs is an introspective search through parallels and coincidence, fragments found in the landscapes from both halves of my identity.
In the photographic diptychs, two places meet across a continuum of absence. The in-between space embodies the distance felt upon returning to Korea, and the displacement of identity over time. Each half of the diptych is a trace of the person I once was in that place, before I no longer belonged.
Trees appear as quiet companions. They are metaphors for myself—physically rooted in the land, yet continually changing with the world around them. White acrylic and traditional Korean black ink hint at East and West, the two sides of my identity. Through layering and juxtaposition, landscapes overlap and dissolve, revealing the fragments of a cultural landscape carried within.
With each series, the exhibition slowly uncovers the lost pieces, the memories, and the spaces in between. What emerges is not a clear sense of belonging, but an acceptance of uncertainty and ambiguity. Perhaps my belonging is not black or white, but the gray space in between.
