Chansong Woo

Untitled

As an interdisciplinary artist, my interest lies in blurring various boundaries: between actuality and ideal, kitsch and high art, and among art disciplines using varied artistic mediums. Recently, my work aims to show how personal memory and trauma can be expressed as art and communicate with viewers although they have different social, cultural, and political backgrounds. I strive for being a good artist by throwing a fundamental question in our lives through artwork. I was born and raised in South Korea and now live in Tallahassee, Florida. There is one social movement in South Korea, the Gwangju Democratization Movement in the city of Gwangju from May 18 to 27, 1980, which symbolizes people’s struggle against military regimes for democracy. Talking about the social movement in South Korea has shaped my visual narrative, which is connected to personal memory and trauma from the Gwangju Democratization Movement. Although I never experienced firsthand the movement, as a hinge generation I wanted to discuss two relationships: one between individual memory and trauma, and one between collective memory and trauma (even history) based on my personal narratives in the present. The narrative plays a role as a trigger for showing how historical memory and trauma transmit to post-generations and constitute their memories in their own right.

My recent drawings finished with charcoal and pen on paper express the provisionality of memory, since charcoal is a material consisting of volatile chemicals and ash. In addition, sophisticated pen strokes indicate the characteristics of flawed and fragmented memory. The drawing represents my memory and its impression because when I try to remember the memory or images that I’ve seen and learned from secondary sources in terms of the social movement, that is always very blurry and hazy, like a picture out of focus. My memory is vulnerable and flawed because it is the recollection from the past, and subjective feelings and emotions are involved. At the same time, the achromatic drawing implies that when I experienced the movement through the documentary, I was sitting on a dark chair in a dark classroom because the curtains were closed for the documentary.

Artwork Description

This drawing serves as a bridge that connects past events and present generations like a photograph. A photograph can link the moment and the viewers although they never saw and experienced the event, or even did not exist at that time. The moment when the viewers see a single photo, they feel, consume, and learn from it even though the photo is a record of the moment from others’ points of view. And the viewer’s outcome becomes a starting point for (re)producing something in a different type or way of language. The viewer was me as an artist, and I finished this work.