WORKS

I decided to leave South Korea.

 

I embarked on a journey wholly for myself. I let go of everything that once defined my life — including spaces filled with countless works and objects I had loved. I even burned some of my own artworks. I withdrew my home deposit, packed my bags, and left behind familiarity — friends, family, and comfort — with no support waiting for me overseas.

 

My journey began in Canada. Standing before the snow-covered Rocky Mountains, I felt an overwhelming desire to experience a wider world. After witnessing the Northern Lights in Yellowknife, I traveled south to the United States and began crossing the country by land. From San Francisco through Yosemite and along Highway 1, from California across Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida — down to Key West and up again to New York — I moved continuously. I drove for long hours, took buses and trains across vast distances, and encountered different lives and landscapes.

 

The world became my stage.

 

In Los Angeles, I stayed one night in a boat Airbnb. In a sudden impulse, I bought party napkins from a nearby store and spent the entire night making flowers. By morning, I had transformed the boat using those paper flowers, my clothes from my suitcase, and palm leaves from the surroundings. In that moment, I realized that I could remain myself without the countless objects I had left behind in Korea.

 

Before leaving Korea, I worked with large, heavy objects that required trucks and formal exhibition spaces. After beginning this new life, my working method transformed. My installations became foldable and compressible, designed to fit into a suitcase. I developed structures that could be packed, transported, installed, dismantled, and reinstalled repeatedly. This was not only a practical shift, but a change in how I chose to exist as an artist.

 

I began installing my work in various environments — symbolic outdoor locations, abandoned buildings, public spaces, and cities I passed through. Whether witnessed or not, the act of installation and removal itself became meaningful. Through these gestures, I participate in the history of each place in that moment.

 

When I arrived in London, the city’s intensity and diversity reignited me. After two exhibitions, I made the decision to return permanently, eventually coming back with a Global Talent visa. London became another stage in this ongoing journey.

 

Flowers have always been part of my life. Growing up surrounded by trees and blossoms, they are deeply embedded in my memory and visual language. From early sculptural works to my paintings and installations, floral forms continue to recur. But I do not see flowers only as symbols of beauty. Within them, I see structure and collapse, sensuality and decay, order and distortion.

 

I am particularly drawn to flowers as they wither. In their fading, structure loosens. Petals twist, colors deepen, rhythms shift. What was once symmetrical becomes irregular. There is a grotesque elegance in this transformation — bowed heads, thorns, fine hairs, fragility and resilience existing simultaneously. I amplify these elements in my work.

 

My installations, often constructed from paper and wire, exist between protection and exposure, vulnerability and imagination. They are lightweight yet persistent, adaptable yet intentional. They do not dominate a space but inhabit it. Lighting transforms them; shadows extend them; environments reshape their presence.

 

Installing flowers is not merely a sculptural act. It is a continuation of my own growth. It is a way of marking presence in a vast world.

 

In traveling, I learned that I do not need permanence to exist. I learned that wherever I install, wherever I dismantle, wherever I move, I remain myself.

 

Wherever I go, Song remains Song.

 

I am the world.