2025 ~
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Feb 2025A window is never just a window. It decides what we see and what remains hidden. In my work, I construct wooden frames that define a particular view, partially obscured by hanji paper. This thin yet significant barrier does not completely block the outside world but filters it—softening edges, diffusing light, leaving room for interpretation. Unlike glass, which promises clarity but reflects as much as it reveals, hanji offers a different way of seeing: one that embraces both ambiguity and presence.
Looking through a window is never passive. We believe we see the world as it is, but our vision is always framed—by culture, memory, and the structures that surround us. In my work, hands grip the frame, holding onto its edges, yet they cannot fully open or remove it. Does the frame offer protection, or does it confine? If the window were gone, would we see more, or would we be lost in formless space?
Western glass windows suggest transparency, an unobstructed truth, yet they also separate and contain. Traditional Korean hanji windows, by contrast, allow light and air to pass through, embracing the imperfect and the uncertain. My work exists between these two ideas—between clarity and concealment, between the seen and the imagined.
These frames do more than define a view; they shape perception itself. The world we see is never just what is there, but what is allowed, what is constructed, what is remembered. Through my work, I explore this tension—not just between inside and outside, but between choice and constraint, agency and illusion. What we believe to be an open view may, in the end, be nothing more than a carefully placed frame.