spirit illness: slump

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spirit illness: slump (2020) | 90cm x 120cm | acrylic, hand-dyed cotton threads on raw canvas

Slump is when movement is stagnant and everything feels impossible. I laid for 6 months as if a ball and chain were clasped around my neck. I couldn’t get up. All senses and my sense of self were being overridden. Feeling hollow and disconnected from my spirit, I lose trust in myself as the grief from the dark red aloe flower pierces through my body. Meanwhile, a white snake coils like innards, symbolising the ancestor spirits that have made a home inside me.

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spirit illness series

The Spirit Illness series explores my long-suffering of a spiritual and metaphysical experience. For most of my life, I endured a series of unexplained symptoms such as undiagnosable depression, extreme fatigue, alcoholism, dreaming and seeing of spirits, and precognitions. Finally, I was diagnosed with a culturally-specific spirit illness, known in Korea as ‘Sinbyoeng’ (신병). The Spirit Illness series began in 2019, and fortunately, the symptoms were diagnosed and treated successfully through a shamanic ritual in July 2020.

​The series mostly includes self-portraits with snakes and animal symbolism. It is a growing body of work, as there are many more stories yet to be told.

spirit illness: the hunt (2020) | 120cm x 90cm | acrylic, hand-dyed cotton thread on linen.

spirit illness: beer (2020) | 120cm x 90cm | acrylic, hand dyed cotton threads on raw canvas.