About
Fish
The image of fish has been symbolically important to me since I was little. I make fish images as if I make icons. It is my private ritual.
Fish represents to me a cluster of certain adjectives – fluid, fragile, gentle and silent. I have symbolically identified myself with fish, since I was a child. I am starting to understand why I have had such inclination towards fish.
According to Korean folk traditions, when a woman conceives a baby, she is endowed with a particular dream composed of symbolic objects, such as a peach for a daughter, a dragon for a boy, etc. When I was about ten, my mother told me about the boy baby she had conceived after my own birth. In the dream, she caught a trout (a symbol for a boy) in a small bowl. She explained that the size of the bowl indicated the life span of the baby, and that that was why he did not live long. He was aborted.
I forgot about this story as I grew older. However, it transformed into an image with which I identify, as if my unborn brother grew up inside me, becoming part of me as fish images.
First Red Fish, beetroot juice on watercolor paper, 42cm x 29.7cm, 2017
Fish with Needles, beetroot juice on watercolor paper, 42cm x 29.7cm, 2017
Fish #3, beetroot juice on watercolor paper, 42cm x 29.7cm, 2017
Fish in a Bowl, Lino‐cut print, 10” x 14”, 1999
Fish Composition #1, Silkscreen, 18” x 14”, 1999
Fish Composition #2, Silkscreen, 18” x 14”, 1999
Two Fish Eaten, Mono-print, 10” x 14”, 1999