Oddments series

Much of this work is my response to our habit of defining things according to values that derive from their immediate usefulness. In particular, I am influenced by the way Nature is interpreted and treated in ordinary human affairs. I have been interested in remnants of natural materials that invisibly hang around human lives, for example, onion skins, lemon seeds, fish bones, and pine needles – things that are discarded after the useful parts are consumed by us. Those natural materials have their own organic lives beyond their usefulness for humans, but they are systematically hidden from us in our modern times. Flush toilets, graveyards remote from the city, garbage collection – these are examples of modern technological interventions that make us forget the natural part of our world. Nonetheless, they are always with us, dormant in the world that we inhabit. I have sought the indescribable states of things at the edge of our attention. The ongoing series titled Oddments is a product of my effort to tease out previously ignored existences.

I probe our inherent habit of giving things conventional meanings, by looking at things that seemingly hold no significance. I seek their underlying nature in their materiality, free from human-made definitions. After their conventional uses are exhausted, the objects often fall outside the range of our meaning-making systems, becoming ambivalent. Are dried flowers still flowers? Are old newspapers still newspapers? This ambivalence allows new possibilities.

Initially, I looked into the way Nature was tamed and commodified to accommodate the needs of the human world, and started the photographic series Oddments in 2013. I became interested in remnants of natural materials that are intimately, yet invisibly present in ordinary human affairs – onion skins, lemon seeds, fish bones, pumpkin stalks, pine needles – things we discard after consuming their useful parts. Then I expanded my repertoire of source materials, combining organic/natural and non-organic/artificial objects found in ordinary places (such as trash cans, streets, or houses) to make prints, and mobile installations (installations that can easily be moved or altered). Thus, my works are necessarily site-specific. I improvise with those found objects to tell the stories of the specific place or environment. I pursue an aesthetic of ordinariness.