“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky—all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. If you wish to travel far and fast, take off all your envies, jealousies, selfishness and fears.” (Cesare Pavese)

On travel, transformation and wars.

Are butterflies always symmetrical?

Do we value symmetry more than asymmetry?

As a result of COVID-19, I unexpectedly found myself in Japan for six months rather than six weeks—a country that did not initially welcome me because I was traveling from South Korea. The experience made me reflect often on the history of deep traumas between the two countries. I contemplated metamorphosis and the emergence process while captivated by the poisons and fears of the world, of the past, present, and future. Being in Japan was fruitful and turbulent, perhaps similar to what a caterpillar might experience in a chrysalis.

I imagined myself as a tiny spider weaving a web as I sewed together white cotton gauze pieces into a nine-foot long dress. The dress underwent several changes and was utilized in both Part I and Part II of “Dreaming of Cocoons in a Butterfly War”

Part I was performed at Kotobuki House in Kofu, Japan on June 26 and 27 and July 3. Each performance lasted about five to ten minutes for an audience of one to five people. Every performance varied and was performed a total of nine times.

Dress Mutations:

– black paint smeared, dripped onto dress

– dress ripped and cut several times

– a red circle painted on the chest of dress to symbolize the Japanese flag

Part II was ten to fifteen minutes long. The same white fabric made of the dress was rigged outdoors, from a rooftop to represent a cocoon. Before placing myself inside the cocoon, I made some alterations to the dress prior to the performance to accommodate the movement out of the cocoon.

After the aerial explorations in and out of the cocoon, with a butterfly on my mouth, beetles scuttle by as I attempt to mutate the dress again by coloring over the Japanese flag. This time using black and blue pastels to transform the Japanese flag into the Korean flag.