During the memorial day, I went to Boston for a while on a schedule of 3 days and two nights. Thankfully, my husband's friend provided a clean and excellent hotel for us. |
 |  Mirabilis, by Wikipedia |
And the last memorable flower is the Impatiens balsamina. The flower language is "don't touch me." It is not clear when women used balsams to color their nails, but there seems to be a legend about a court lady who dyed balsams on their nails during the King Chungseon of Goryeo for a long time in Korea. The balsam flower is crushed with alum, tied to the nails, and dyed a day later. First of all, the red color means to defeat ghosts, so the meaning of the folk belief that balsam dye prevents all diseases is included. And there is a story that the first love succeeds if balsam water remains on the nails until the first snow comes. So the children picked the red petals, ground them well, put them on their nails, and bandaged them so that they could soak into their nails.
 |  Impatiens balsamina, by Wikipedia |
All the flowers I liked as a child had stories, tastes, and beauty. Children discover and share little joy and fun through flowers. Salvia, Mirabilis, and Balsamina flowers were all just ordinary flowers but they were memories and happiness in the hearts of children, and vitamins that helped them endure a boring and difficult life.
Like poet Kim Chun-soo's flower phrase, before the name is called, it is just a gesture. But when I gave meaning to that existence, it became someone's flower.
So is the picture. Which painting is the significance to someone. Gives some vitality to life, comforts others, and reminds others of scenes you want to remember. And to them, paintings that are merely canvases become meanings, artworks, and life partners who want to live together.
Like poet Kim Chun-soo's flower phrase, before the name is called, it is just a gesture. But when I gave meaning to that existence, it became someone's flower.
So is the picture. Which painting is the significance to someone. Gives some vitality to life, comforts others, and reminds others of scenes you want to remember. And to them, paintings that are merely canvases become meanings, artworks, and life partners who want to live together.
Reference :
www.sangdam.kr/encyclopedia/openmind/makeplay/makeplay32.html
https://m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?blogId=say7915&logNo=221319187302&proxyReferer=https:%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Besides being a painter when I was a child, my other dream was to become a florist. Once upon a time, there was a small flower shop nearby my house, and the young woman florist who sold flowers was so pretty and elegant. She always wore a dress that looked like artwork with flower patterns, and she always smiled whenever I had eye contact with her. Everyone in the world was busy eating and living, and life seemed like a battlefield, but somehow I felt that the flower shop was a different world, like a paradise. Is it the reason I received a little comfort from flowers in a difficult life? I have loved flowers since then. However, now I know that even the inside of the flower shop was like a field of thorns.
Still, I may have wanted to live as pretty and elegantly as the florist in the messy reality. So art was like a flower shop to me in that sense. The world is full of envy, jealousy, pain, and sorrow, but the pictures in the frame are always beautiful.
When I was in Germany, I visited a special exhibition of Japanese photographers in ZKM. the artist took the photos close-up of the street after the Fukushima disaster. Through the production, the artist conveyed the message that Fukushima's nuclear explosion and the world collapsed, but the sea was still beautiful and calm. In a world where beauty and pain coexist, he says he thought about what art is. The situation that it is challenging to make the disaster the subject of art has remained unchanged. But I believe that the intention to show the world as it is changing the world little by little. It is hard to talk about pressures such as political, economic, and very personal forces at play.
Still, I may have wanted to live as pretty and elegantly as the florist in the messy reality. So art was like a flower shop to me in that sense. The world is full of envy, jealousy, pain, and sorrow, but the pictures in the frame are always beautiful.
When I was in Germany, I visited a special exhibition of Japanese photographers in ZKM. the artist took the photos close-up of the street after the Fukushima disaster. Through the production, the artist conveyed the message that Fukushima's nuclear explosion and the world collapsed, but the sea was still beautiful and calm. In a world where beauty and pain coexist, he says he thought about what art is. The situation that it is challenging to make the disaster the subject of art has remained unchanged. But I believe that the intention to show the world as it is changing the world little by little. It is hard to talk about pressures such as political, economic, and very personal forces at play.
@ Ken Kato
Anyway, I didn't become a florist, but I would often present a picture of flowers to someone to show my appreciation in exchange. This painting was given as a gift to a professor who helped my husband study for a long time and became a good mentor.
I will still never forget the pure and clear eyes he showed me when he received the picture as small as the palm of his hand. He truly knows the joy and comfort of art and has since become a major customer of my pictures. Even though I drew pictures with intentions and inner meanings that I did not tell anyone, he used to guess the secret intentions right away. One of the reasons why I was able to paint without letting go of the brush is because of customers who have this kind of sense.
My flower shop doesn't sell real flowers. If you don't throw it away on purpose, it won't wither instead and stay with you for a long time. But instead of feeling no energy anymore when the flower withers, the painting flower will still retain many feelings. I started a project called The Painter's Flower Shop. I draw only one flower with acrylic on this white A4 sized paper.
The flowers painted there look painful because their stems are twisted, and shadows are everywhere. However, from a distance, it is still a single flower. Beautiful, like our life.
My flower shop doesn't sell real flowers. If you don't throw it away on purpose, it won't wither instead and stay with you for a long time. But instead of feeling no energy anymore when the flower withers, the painting flower will still retain many feelings. I started a project called The Painter's Flower Shop. I draw only one flower with acrylic on this white A4 sized paper.
The flowers painted there look painful because their stems are twisted, and shadows are everywhere. However, from a distance, it is still a single flower. Beautiful, like our life.
Reference :
https://www.dw.com/en/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-an-artists-view-10-years-later/a-56818340
https://www.dw.com/en/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-an-artists-view-10-years-later/a-56818340
When working as a researcher at the Medical Information Research Center, I planned a microscopic photo exhibition. My boss, Professor Young-Sung Lee, visited the US for a while and was impressed by the microscopic photo exhibition hosted by Kodak Film and wanted to realize it in Korea. It was my job to implement his idea that the medical field is also a knowledge industry that creates infinite content. So I mainly organized an offline exhibition on one side and, on the other side, an online collection, planning and promoting shows and managing the contents.
Professionals working in the medical department are incredibly reluctant to create something without evidence. A fatal accident occurs when they make something without any continuous groundless experimentation. In general, it seems that art that constantly creates new things and medicine that continuously learns the old theories repeatedly will not harmonize. And ordinary people think with common sense that an artist and a scientist are in parallel.
The Biomicroscopy Exhibition is an event in which experts in bio and medicine have selected photographs of cells taken in a laboratory with an artistic sense. As I looked at the results, I saw art and medical science work like an orchestra that produces outstanding notes with different instruments. Therefore they presented their artworks to break the prejudice that artistic sense was not necessary for the study. Actually, even in Leonardo da Vinci, art was also the means of explaining and expressing science in detail. During the Renaissance, painters were also doctors. They tried to dissect a body with insane curiosity, drew each piece, and record it for descendants.
Professionals working in the medical department are incredibly reluctant to create something without evidence. A fatal accident occurs when they make something without any continuous groundless experimentation. In general, it seems that art that constantly creates new things and medicine that continuously learns the old theories repeatedly will not harmonize. And ordinary people think with common sense that an artist and a scientist are in parallel.
The Biomicroscopy Exhibition is an event in which experts in bio and medicine have selected photographs of cells taken in a laboratory with an artistic sense. As I looked at the results, I saw art and medical science work like an orchestra that produces outstanding notes with different instruments. Therefore they presented their artworks to break the prejudice that artistic sense was not necessary for the study. Actually, even in Leonardo da Vinci, art was also the means of explaining and expressing science in detail. During the Renaissance, painters were also doctors. They tried to dissect a body with insane curiosity, drew each piece, and record it for descendants.
 |  |  |
Leonardo da Vinci's anatomy
In my dream, by Myungja Anna Koh Notably, there are some scientists and doctors around me who are talented in art. For example, when I was in Germany, the mathematician who bought my painting "in my dreams" used oil to draw stunning Chinese landscapes, hung them all over the house, and invited us.
What is more, the Chinese dentist I met in Long island showed me some fantastic oil paintings he painted in his free time.
Hee-Doo Chung, who I came to know when working as a medical informatics researcher in Korea, is a surgeon and a person with an excellent talent for art. He is living a new life by creating prescription medical animations that explain to patients and achieves the challenge of commercializing it.
What is more, the Chinese dentist I met in Long island showed me some fantastic oil paintings he painted in his free time.
Hee-Doo Chung, who I came to know when working as a medical informatics researcher in Korea, is a surgeon and a person with an excellent talent for art. He is living a new life by creating prescription medical animations that explain to patients and achieves the challenge of commercializing it.
In fact, from my research, there are attempts at universities or graduate schools to create new careers by combining these two fields appropriately. For instance, the below screen announces an excellent example of both art and science into a rewarding career.
" Do you enjoy both science and art ? Are you having a hard time deciding whether you want to go get your bachelors in biology or graphic design? Good news! There are ways to turn your passion for both art and science into a rewarding career! Whether you think of yourself as an artist with an interest in science or a scientist with a flair for design there are many careers out there where skills and concepts from these two seemingly opposite fields can overlap. " (cited in reference)
Click on the screen below to see the full content.
" Do you enjoy both science and art ? Are you having a hard time deciding whether you want to go get your bachelors in biology or graphic design? Good news! There are ways to turn your passion for both art and science into a rewarding career! Whether you think of yourself as an artist with an interest in science or a scientist with a flair for design there are many careers out there where skills and concepts from these two seemingly opposite fields can overlap. " (cited in reference)
Click on the screen below to see the full content.
Returning to the story of the biomicroscopy exhibition, the beautiful artworks that I appreciated during the photography exhibition are still unforgettable.
For a moment, I'm going to introduce some of the most impressive works.
For a moment, I'm going to introduce some of the most impressive works.
Kissing (SEM 400X, Dongpyo Ryu) he took the joint of a long-bearded yellow Chim ant with an electron microscope.
Dandelion Flower fields (Kim Ji-young), intestinal glands, and goblet cells in the intestine split into yellow dandelion flowers.
Scream (Han-na Park), a cross-section of bamboo charcoal was sanded and taken enlarged. It is also reminiscent of the "scream" of Norwegian artist Munch.
Blooming (Choi Ki-Ju), a flower bud that just burst She removed the pimple on the rabbit ear and took an enlarged picture.
Indeed, people who have the ability to draw scientific data and evidence with their eyes by applying the expressive power of art with freedom as its essence make us take a step forward. The site below introduces non-profit organizations that are engaged in exhibitions or activities that combine art and science.
Art & Science collaboration INC (ASCI) http://www.asci.org/homepage.html
We hope that these joint efforts will create new forms of form in the future, and this form will develop each new area as if it were made from a tree branch.
Reference:
https://biochem.web.utah.edu/iwasa/PDFs/STEM_Fair_Careers_Infographic.pdf
http://www.paxnet.co.kr/tbbs/view?id=N00811&seq=16282797
https://biochem.web.utah.edu/iwasa/PDFs/STEM_Fair_Careers_Infographic.pdf
http://www.paxnet.co.kr/tbbs/view?id=N00811&seq=16282797
When I used to work in the hospital as a nurse, I have applied for the Nursing Literature Award hosted by the Korean Nurses Association.
Unexpectedly, after working, a poem written in the library was selected as the first winner. Here is the poem.
Paper boat in 1980 (by Myungja Anna Koh)
Pouring rainy day, like a sadly crying child in 1980.
Brother and I folded a piece of white paper so,
Made a paper boat.
Then we float a little ship away on the road that had become a river.
May my little carrier reaches my father, who suddenly left.
And pick up him and bring to come back home.
May he can read us a bedtime story again.
So we wanted desperately.
In a dark and small room,
In loneliness and worries without a single ray of light,
We waited for him, who had not returned.
Filled that dark empty with tears and sadness.
We wrote a letter with that heart and folded it.
One day, suddenly, someone sailed my father far away.
And he never came back.
So we made a small pity boat again
folded a paper boat like my father's heart.
Day after day, we ship it as a slender boat on the raging waves,
With a hope that someday he will get back on that boat.
May my family live together in a world like a sailboat for desire.
I'm still folding it, hoping that way again today.
The poem I wrote above is about recalling my childhood memories. At the time in Korea, it was common to arrest people with different political ideas or beliefs and put them in jail or torture. Then, like a poem, one day, suddenly detectives in plain clothes came to the house and took my father. My father wasn't only a spy, but also he was not a social activist against the government, and he was just an ordinary head of the household. However, making a person a victim and being promoted made it easy prey for detectives who wanted the desire for power.
We went to the police station searching for my father, who had gone somewhere in a vehicle without a license plate. But the police officer gave us some advice to treat it missing.
However, like a miracle, as we desperately wished, a few months later, my father returned home in a weary look. He was wearing bloodstained torn underwear and struggled to sit. The torn shirt is still evident in my memory. My father told me what kind of hardship he had been through.
It was that they would frame the innocent person and kill him in an electric torture chair, then put it in a bag of rice and throw it away in the Han River. Before my father entered the electrical torture room, he said he saw many bags piled up in the hallway. But did heaven save him? Before his turn, he said that he would write a will, and someone among them allowed him to do it. That's how he wrote his life story, and a detective said he had read it and released him. Since then, my dad had told me, " Write anything whatever you think". Anyway, my father hasn't seen the rice bag for a while. And he couldn't even get a call, knowing he had been wiretapping on for over a decade. Like all fathers in the world, the next day, he had to go to work after going through such distress.
The bloodstained underwear that my father wore at that time had already been thrown away and disappeared.
All the same time, the pain of my father that I saw and heard as a child becomes trauma, and It always wanders around me.
Art was like a friend who shared and listened to me. And it let me know why I need darkness in my paintings. My life seemed to sail toward the dimming around the sea at stake like a painting "La Barque de Dante." So the French painter Eugene Delacroix drew a picture called "La Barque de Dante, 1822" to depict Italian poet Dante on a ship headed to hell under the guidance of the ancient Roman poet "Vergilius".
I do love this picture because I have a good counselor like Vergilius who has been my friend in a complicated life. So that Vergilius is an art to me.
Unexpectedly, after working, a poem written in the library was selected as the first winner. Here is the poem.
Paper boat in 1980 (by Myungja Anna Koh)
Pouring rainy day, like a sadly crying child in 1980.
Brother and I folded a piece of white paper so,
Made a paper boat.
Then we float a little ship away on the road that had become a river.
May my little carrier reaches my father, who suddenly left.
And pick up him and bring to come back home.
May he can read us a bedtime story again.
So we wanted desperately.
In a dark and small room,
In loneliness and worries without a single ray of light,
We waited for him, who had not returned.
Filled that dark empty with tears and sadness.
We wrote a letter with that heart and folded it.
One day, suddenly, someone sailed my father far away.
And he never came back.
So we made a small pity boat again
folded a paper boat like my father's heart.
Day after day, we ship it as a slender boat on the raging waves,
With a hope that someday he will get back on that boat.
May my family live together in a world like a sailboat for desire.
I'm still folding it, hoping that way again today.
The poem I wrote above is about recalling my childhood memories. At the time in Korea, it was common to arrest people with different political ideas or beliefs and put them in jail or torture. Then, like a poem, one day, suddenly detectives in plain clothes came to the house and took my father. My father wasn't only a spy, but also he was not a social activist against the government, and he was just an ordinary head of the household. However, making a person a victim and being promoted made it easy prey for detectives who wanted the desire for power.
We went to the police station searching for my father, who had gone somewhere in a vehicle without a license plate. But the police officer gave us some advice to treat it missing.
However, like a miracle, as we desperately wished, a few months later, my father returned home in a weary look. He was wearing bloodstained torn underwear and struggled to sit. The torn shirt is still evident in my memory. My father told me what kind of hardship he had been through.
It was that they would frame the innocent person and kill him in an electric torture chair, then put it in a bag of rice and throw it away in the Han River. Before my father entered the electrical torture room, he said he saw many bags piled up in the hallway. But did heaven save him? Before his turn, he said that he would write a will, and someone among them allowed him to do it. That's how he wrote his life story, and a detective said he had read it and released him. Since then, my dad had told me, " Write anything whatever you think". Anyway, my father hasn't seen the rice bag for a while. And he couldn't even get a call, knowing he had been wiretapping on for over a decade. Like all fathers in the world, the next day, he had to go to work after going through such distress.
The bloodstained underwear that my father wore at that time had already been thrown away and disappeared.
All the same time, the pain of my father that I saw and heard as a child becomes trauma, and It always wanders around me.
Art was like a friend who shared and listened to me. And it let me know why I need darkness in my paintings. My life seemed to sail toward the dimming around the sea at stake like a painting "La Barque de Dante." So the French painter Eugene Delacroix drew a picture called "La Barque de Dante, 1822" to depict Italian poet Dante on a ship headed to hell under the guidance of the ancient Roman poet "Vergilius".
I do love this picture because I have a good counselor like Vergilius who has been my friend in a complicated life. So that Vergilius is an art to me.
La Barque de Dante 1822, by Eugene Delacroix 1798-1863
Nowadays, the weather is excellent, so I often come to the yard to see the crystal clear blue sky. If I remember, around this time of last year, the sky was as clear and bright without any impurities as today. Simultaneously, the picture-like-sky seen by us, isolated as a pandemic, was another form of comfort. So I took a picture like this to keep the message of hope.
Blue sky in 2020, Myungja Anna Koh
Now, people are getting vaccinated in earnest, and finally, cases are decreasing. The vaccination rate is 52.2% in our county, and the positive test rate is 1.4 %, and the vulnerability level is medium. So now, people are cautiously talking about hope for the future.
When I first heard the news that we had to shut down due to the Covid virus, I went to Costco to be sure to maintain at least a 30-day supply. But as you all know, the toilet paper was sold out, and there was no way to get eggs and bread. Later found out that it was really only trivial.
By the way, for a long time, I couldn't even take a step outside the house, so I was trapped inside the house and only listening to news about viruses, hospitals, coffins, and graveyards every day. Back then, my 3-year-old daughter made play-dohs and put them on her play pink table like below, and no one could touch them. It seemed like it was a kind of ritual to fight awful stress.
Celina's work during Pandemic
Eventually, it had become a daily routine to see the coffins or bodies on the news. But, the thing that hurt me the most was when I had heard a plan to use an ice rink in the neighborhood to store body. It was a horrible nightmare, although the idea later changed to use the farm's old freezer.
In Spring 2020, we felt unfamiliar when seeing and hearing the beautiful sky, fantastic weather, and pretty bird sounds. We became prisoners of fear for almost a month and did not even go to our backyard.
Then, by the time we accepted the sad routine as part of us, we could go outside. Worried that there would be a virus in the cool breeze, we came out cautiously, but my daughter ran to the bottom of the tree like a spring in a machine. She danced, watching the beautiful singing bird on the branch. Also, I have a similar experience when I took her for the first time to the school last September. Everyone was standing at the school's door to send the children to school, wearing masks and carefully holding them 6 feet. At that moment, everyone is tired of long isolation life, and no one dared to speak. Just then, a little boy looked up at the sky and shouted out. "Mom, look at that! It's a moon." Children are excited when they see the moon appear white in the morning. Only then that people began to relax and laugh.
From my perspective, the sound of children's songs and laughter in difficulty and hardships, like candlelight coming out of darkness, are messages of hope that we must keep. And it is art itself.
In the past, during the Spanish flu, our senior painters drew a picture with such a childlike mind fighting fear. In New York Times Style Magazine, I can discover in the meaningful related article, "What Can We Learn From the Art of Pandemics Past?"
" We will all have our own metaphors and images to make meaning of this time: art or reportage or our own witnessing, the visuals that endure, reflecting us back to ourselves." (By Megan O’Grady).
Slowly running in a dark tunnel towards the light, we all became witnesses and companions to share the testimony out of grid life.
"The 2020 pandemic will change the way we see art forever, too, and artists and writers have already begun doing the work of illuminating new shifts and losses, documenting the small kindnesses and cruelties, the large failures of leadership, technology and society." (cited part of the reference article content)
Above all else, I will try to leave something like a picture of last year's blue sky, like the play diagram my child has accumulated on her desk. It is a privilege of art to be able to look back on what remains so that even if it remains like any interesting event.
Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/t-magazine/art-coronavirus.html
In Spring 2020, we felt unfamiliar when seeing and hearing the beautiful sky, fantastic weather, and pretty bird sounds. We became prisoners of fear for almost a month and did not even go to our backyard.
Then, by the time we accepted the sad routine as part of us, we could go outside. Worried that there would be a virus in the cool breeze, we came out cautiously, but my daughter ran to the bottom of the tree like a spring in a machine. She danced, watching the beautiful singing bird on the branch. Also, I have a similar experience when I took her for the first time to the school last September. Everyone was standing at the school's door to send the children to school, wearing masks and carefully holding them 6 feet. At that moment, everyone is tired of long isolation life, and no one dared to speak. Just then, a little boy looked up at the sky and shouted out. "Mom, look at that! It's a moon." Children are excited when they see the moon appear white in the morning. Only then that people began to relax and laugh.
From my perspective, the sound of children's songs and laughter in difficulty and hardships, like candlelight coming out of darkness, are messages of hope that we must keep. And it is art itself.
In the past, during the Spanish flu, our senior painters drew a picture with such a childlike mind fighting fear. In New York Times Style Magazine, I can discover in the meaningful related article, "What Can We Learn From the Art of Pandemics Past?"
" We will all have our own metaphors and images to make meaning of this time: art or reportage or our own witnessing, the visuals that endure, reflecting us back to ourselves." (By Megan O’Grady).
Slowly running in a dark tunnel towards the light, we all became witnesses and companions to share the testimony out of grid life.
"The 2020 pandemic will change the way we see art forever, too, and artists and writers have already begun doing the work of illuminating new shifts and losses, documenting the small kindnesses and cruelties, the large failures of leadership, technology and society." (cited part of the reference article content)
Above all else, I will try to leave something like a picture of last year's blue sky, like the play diagram my child has accumulated on her desk. It is a privilege of art to be able to look back on what remains so that even if it remains like any interesting event.
Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/t-magazine/art-coronavirus.html
 Edvard Munch's "Self-Portrait after Spanish flu"(1919) by The Munch Museum |
Yesterday I took my daughter to the Dollar Tree store for a while. Dollar Tree, formerly known as Only $1.00, is an American chain of discount variety stores that sells items for $1 or less. In Europe, One euro shop seems to play the same role. Dollar Tree is a store that my daughter loves because she can put her favorite toys in a shopping cart without some restrictions from her mother.
Someday, I've seen a friendly grandmother and grandson in a store before. First, the grandson asked his grandmother, "Can I put everything into the cart when I want?" Then she answered, " By all means! my sweety". After that, the little boy smiled with a lovely expression as if he had the power of the world. So the scenery in my memories remains until now, like a scene from a movie about humanism.
Whenever children visit the dentist in Germany, the dentist shows them a giant size toy box after treatment. Inside a square-shaped toy box with wheels, there are many various toys for around a dollar. And the doctor speaks to the children in a kind voice. "Pick just one toy you want to have. I'll give it to you as a gift toy". Choosing a toy in the box makes it a joyful journey to go to the dentist, to children that always afraid of dental treatment.
It's a pity that I don't have the opportunity to experience that kind of thing anymore in the United States. I have seen an interview that a foreigner living in Korea is returning to his country, Norway. The biggest reason is that there are few candy stores in Korea where he can choose and eat as much as he likes in his country as a child. And he said that one day, it suddenly came to him like homesickness and made up his mind to homecoming.
Freedom and afford to buy whatever you want to choose from everything. When a child grows up and becomes an adult, at some point, he realizes that this is something no one can do. And, like nostalgia, you miss the days when you could do what you wanted in our parents' love. And sometimes, you can recall the painful memories of not buying the toys from your mother. But, perhaps after becoming an adult, you may find out why she had to do that, and you may be in a situation where you can't argue anymore.
Art is like a toy box where anyone can take out what they want. Because of the freedom of expression, when we pursue art, we feel like going back to childhood in a time machine.
Through the eyes of children, 2013, Myungja Anna Koh
Moreover, representing the freedom to express what we want to do has helped humans pursue and assert their rights as human beings anytime, anywhere.
"For the first time since escaping to Lebanon, I feel that someone sees us as human beings, who not only require food and shelter, but also have cultural needs."Martina Sabra quotes a Syrian refugee saying this sentence.
The arts are an ideal tool to express freely that a person can think of themselves. Besides, it can help the public to express their opinions, philosophies, thoughts, and emotions. Therefore, humans have constantly created pictures, paintings, songs, dancings, writings, and other performances. If humans do not enjoy this freedom, they are individuals with an adult children who cannot grow up in your heart even when they become an adult. But paradoxically, it is also the power of the art that makes these inner child grow.
Reference : The Arts, A human right, by Sabine Balk.
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/why-arts-need-and-deserve-freedom
"For the first time since escaping to Lebanon, I feel that someone sees us as human beings, who not only require food and shelter, but also have cultural needs."Martina Sabra quotes a Syrian refugee saying this sentence.
The arts are an ideal tool to express freely that a person can think of themselves. Besides, it can help the public to express their opinions, philosophies, thoughts, and emotions. Therefore, humans have constantly created pictures, paintings, songs, dancings, writings, and other performances. If humans do not enjoy this freedom, they are individuals with an adult children who cannot grow up in your heart even when they become an adult. But paradoxically, it is also the power of the art that makes these inner child grow.
Reference : The Arts, A human right, by Sabine Balk.
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/why-arts-need-and-deserve-freedom
Film, Minari by pancinema The film "Minari" is a classic immigrant story with specific details that many people can relate to their life. The story begins when the Korean American father, Jacob(Steven Yeun) of an immigrant family, heads to Asokan, a rural town in the United States, to fulfill his American dream. They came from Korea in the 1980s to live a better life, and As a means of living, they work as a chick gender inspector in a California factory. However, Jacob is disillusioned with his monotonous job and wants to show his daughter, Anne, and six-year-old boy, David, the ideal image of the head of a householder who realized his dream as a farmer. But his wife, Monica(Jeri Han), disagrees with his future goals and wants to return to California for a stable life and treat David's heart disease. The only tension that leads to a calming movie like this classical music is the conflict between Jacob and Monica. Had they not been close-ups and vividly alive descriptions of their strains, this story would have been nothing more than an American dream scenario or a diary for immigrants.
One day, they saw the news that a tornado was approaching their 50-acre farmhouse, and Monica's expression was the same as the attitude of the immigrants to the risk they faced in unfamiliar land for the first time. Because the description that evokes empathy is like the autobiography of director Jeong Isaac, an American Korean raised in an immigrant family.
Director Jung made the story's climax by not forcing him to put a dramatic element into the screenplay but by introducing Grandma's character in the play. Grandmother, Soonja(Yuh-Jung Yun) came from Korea to take care of her grandchildren instead of Monica. Soonja, a typical Korean grandmother, brings water parsley seeds from Korea and plants them along a nearby stream with her grandchildren. Minari is a familiar Korean herb name and can cook in various foods. It symbolizes the Koreans' ability to adapt quickly and the fortitude to rise again after overcoming difficulties. In the middle, the film shows a little joy that sparkles like our lives in constant tension. Grandmothers from Korea are holding hands and walking along the stream, children laughing on wooden swings made by their mother, and husband fulfilling their dreams with neighbors. All of these spectacles are probably thought of by most immigrants at least once.
But conflicts always arise when people who have lived in different backgrounds gather together for a long time. The grandchildren bother the grandmother, who doesn't fit with them, and the son-in-law complains at the mother-in-law, who secretly makes the wife's side. To add insult to injury, Jacob was scammed by the same Korean and lost all the money he had saved for his dreams. This movie tells about life itself. It is like our lives that we must endure and endure numerous hardships and difficulties for a sparkly short time. After many twists and turns, they eventually adapt to the peaceful Asokan, assimilate with their neighbors, and live a life like a movie. This film calmly portrays immigrant families becoming one with nature and the people around them.
This film was not an intense stimulus like a poster for incitement or a success story that was not common, but it was a meaningful attempt to remind us that our life itself is a film.
From an unfamiliar land in Germany to another strange land in the United States, I look back at the lives of immigrants where every day is a challenge and every hour is tense. At any moment, I realize myself calling me that I am an immigrant artist. When I attend the group exhibition in Mills Pond Gallery last year, I wrote my artist statement like that:
Last April, I have finally got an opportunity to attend ArtExpo New York.
But the pandemic broke my plan and the event postponed next year.
Moreover, I still have been struggling with a hard time since I moved to New York from Germany.
As an immigrant artist, everything is a big challenge for me.
In spite of the difficulty, art gives me energy for survival and mission for the future.
I believe that war and chaos have plagued for a long time, but even the plague passed us for an artistic life.
I hope to become a immigrant painter who draws such a Minari-like work that can grow well anywhere and be a portion of good energy for anyone.
One of my routines is to bring my child to the playground as soon as school is over. Thankfully, it brings me little jewel-like joy when I asked and had small talk with parents who watch their children playing.
In Korea, someone asks something to others without reason, and they are treated as strange people. That's why Korean usually reluctant to talk to street persons who they don't know before. To do that, they have some purpose of selling things or mission work to say "Trust in Jesus."
But, in America, small talk is familiar scenery anywhere, that I think it's an excellent way to expand our range of interests, activities, and knowledge.
Every so often, I meet a person who has the same situation as an immigrant. And then I am pleased to ask what is the impression of America. To that question, many people give different answers depending on their own unique experiences, backgrounds, opinions, and cultures.
In my case, I moved to Germany in 2016. My husband needed to get more challenges to achieve his studies. At that time, I was working as a researcher in the medical informatics field. Almost I exhausted with overloading as multiplayer.
The first view I saw from the window of an airplane getting off at Frankfurt Airport in Germany was a variety of green, rectangular-shaped lawns. It was winter, and it was amazing to see the green scene. Of course, Korean grass turns yellow in winter. But, as I later found out, the German turf was green all year round. And I could see people walking and often stopping to see trees or flowers. Unfortunately, when I was in Korea, I couldn't afford to stop seeing flowers. The green feeling and the appearance of people who enjoy nature remain sincerely as images of Germany.
After living in Germany for 8 years, I moved to the United States. When I arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport, I was rather impressed by the paintings inside the airport. It consists of 28 panels, 8 x 350 ft, installed above the waiting line for screening for entry into New York. It was made by an artist, Debora Masters, and she expressed relief through her artworks, like a folding screen with a series of pictures. The pictures describe our ordinary living such as dinner, vacation, sport, and family time. In addition, the friendly paintings where the various races gather and enjoy daily life helped to relieve vague anxiety about unfamiliar places.
My image of America goes back to my childhood and connected to the movie " Back to the future," an American science fiction. The impressive part of the movie was Marty's (Michael J. Fox) house, where the home passed the front yard with the post box, opened the fence, and entered the backyard. There are not many detached houses with yards in Korea, and also, it is a rare sight to see the places with front yards and backyards, so such a scene was interesting.
Now I live in suburban New York, and I feel some liberty and impression whenever I look around the street's post boxes. The post boxes are different, like colors, shapes, and designs, and it has only kept their rules about the height by post offices' regulations. When I was in Korea, I was well educated that I should always be in the same style as my group. That's why I felt freedom when I saw various colorful mailboxes on the streets. This diversity in life gives me joyful freedom and broadens my view of the world. I wonder if this is the role art is pursuing.
Walking New York, by Debora Masters, John F. Kennedy airport
The Diversity is a artistic expression by Jaime Chou and Noah Van Blarcom. Diversity can be defined as the quality or state of having many different forms, types or ideas. Diversity is the idea of everyone and everything coming in different shapes, forms, colors and sizes.
If there is a wish for me, just as I felt freedom and hope when I saw the mailbox for the first time, I would like my work to convey that diversity to someone.
If there is a wish for me, just as I felt freedom and hope when I saw the mailbox for the first time, I would like my work to convey that diversity to someone.
Sonnet, Acrylic, 10x 10, 2011 Myungja Anna Koh
"When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. "
- Sonnets no. 29 by William Shakespeare
Until I purely find my world and identity in the painting, it was such a person who constantly compares me with other people and laments.
With this depressed and desperate mind, I should always seek what the point of lack by myself is. However, since I couldn't find my true self, I had no choice but to rely on the recognition and praise around me without knowing the true joy of life. After writing so far and looking back to my sentences, it is like a testimony of Christianity. In my experience, it was like the process of becoming a Christian.
Anyway, I did love the poem of sonnets no. 29 of Shakespeare, and it gives me comfort and cheer. But I can't understand What Shakespeare was trying to say until I bring that sentence into my life.
Above all, there are countless gas lightings around us. Gaslighting is what hinders you from seeing the essence of an object. It keeps you from finding the lark at the door of heaven and keeps you trapped in constant despair and dissatisfaction.
Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that occurs in abusive relationships. The term gaslighting comes from the 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton, known in America as " Angel Street" and later developed into the film " Gas Light" by Alfred Hitchcock. In the suspense film, a manipulative husband tries to make his wife think she is losing her mind by making subtle changes in her environment, including slowly and steadily dimming the flame on a gas lamp. Not only does he disrupt her background and make her believe she is insane, but he also abuses and controls her, cutting her off from family and friends. As a result, she loses her identity as he intended and eventually goes crazy.
In order to live a free life from gaslighting, the emotional process of losing oneself and becoming someone other than oneself is an excellent way to building self-reliance and confidence in defining their reality.
When I find myself through art and find myself, for the first time, I can understand the sentence " Like to the lark at break of day arising". Even though my reality is shabby and lacking, I don't want to change with anyone.
Art found reality in the gaslighting surrounding me, made me feel complete, and eventually helped me escape it.
The gaslighters said to me, incessantly trying to see something happen.
"Everything is your fault, and you are useless. If you don't listen to me, you can't survive."
But I believed these strange words until I visited a hospital to care my Thyroid disease. The hospital is in Germany, the doctor's name is Joseph Gatti. His clinic looked like an art gallery, with many pictures hanging on every wall, and there were some art books and art catalogs on the table. So, by chance, I picked up an art masterpiece of paintings by an artist and started looking at them during the waiting time. The book says that Nobody is perfect. It is a simple and common word, but it strongly impacted the related paintings. I realized the reality that each other's incomplete entities hurt each other, and I understood my incompleteness and put it down.
What should we do first to protect ourselves from the many gaslighters such as wrong media, content that we act as emotional manipulator from people sometimes myself and live a happy life like a skylark at the gate of heaven? Perhaps even a few hundred years ago, Shakespeare pondered the matter and came to this conclusion.
" From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. "
Reference:
what to do if you're getting gaslighted, First Person, firstperson@vox.com
What is Gaslighting? by Sherri Gordon, reviewed by Amy Morin, LCSW
