Young Sun Art: My Journey in Search of Self-Identity
My art is a continuous journey in search of self-identity and an intrinsic effort to realize my self-reflection in more tangible and publicly accessible forms. I am very interested in my life, body, potential, and how I see things. “Look At Me!” That is my statement. I love who I am and what I do. I am dance, I am beautiful, and I am happy with myself. I am melting my life into art. When I completely disappear into the art world, the flower that will blossom after me will be named “Young Sun Art.”
In the middle of a busy intersection in Seoul in 1999, I happened to drop my business card. I was working in the Asian Wall Street Journal Seoul office. Suddenly, a question came into my mind like an epiphany: “Without this business card, do I not exist?” It was the very moment I discovered the vanity of life and my ambiguous self-identity. I realized how much my self-identity and happiness depended on the ideals set by others. When I did not meet those criteria, my self-esteem suffered. I also judged others according to those ideals such as appearance, titles, money, or socio-political power.
As I grew up in Korea during the 1980s and 1990s, I was told by my school teachers that the most desirable goal in life was to get a good GPA, to go to a good college, and to meet a good husband with power and money. Though a woman could get a good job, it was normal to quit her job once she married. It seemed like there were no other options in life. The schoolteachers taught us how to walk like a modest woman and how we should only give priority to the school grade. The students were not allowed to read other books (but I read a lot of books at home) that were not related to the college entrance exam and to make boyfriends. Also, it was OK to be without friends as long as we could get a good grade. I was not allowed time to get lost or look around on the set pathway “in order to live a good life.” Individual freedom was something that I would attain once I went to college. A school grade, a college name, a business title, and a husband’s social status seemed to define who I was. I did not have a chance to seriously consider who I was or how to live a life. I was neither motivated by the life philosophy set by the school system nor thought of finding my own way.
So, I graduated from college, studied abroad, and became a stereotyped cool-looking businesswoman like on a magazine page: I wore high heels, a business suit, and a square business suitcase. I could have just lived a life like that happily ever after, probably marrying any guy who was interested in me. However, when I dropped my business card, my presence felt as if it had suddenly disappeared. I was scared of who I was without any social titles. It might not be my authentic self that those Korean business people showed respect to, but it was my title in the company.
In 1997, Korea was under the Currency Crisis along with many other Asian countries. Many big companies, like the conglomerate Daewoo, went on a restructuring process, laying off many employees in managerial positions. Korean TV dramas reflected this social atmosphere. People who were once respected and followed by their junior employees in lower positions suddenly lost their dignity in front of them after they were fired from companies. Many of these wandered around Seoul subway stations as the homeless. It was the result of depending their identity and happiness on the social roles and titles rather than from the unemployment itself. Observing the Crisis, I had a sudden fear and disgust about the human relationship based on utilitarian purposes, which looked so fake, shallow, illusive, and inhuman.
My identity was replaced with what the society thought desirable. I had to find who I was and what I liked to do. Meanwhile, a song by a famous Korean singer-songwriter, Hae-Chul Shin, gave me a turning point in my life. The lyric says:
What do you really want, a thing that you can bet everything for?
Like in the song, I did not know what I wanted even after legally becoming an adult. I liked my work with my American boss at the American company, but that was not what I could die for. I lost the way to look at myself, because the society mainly taught me how to look at what others were doing and to pursue their happiness as mine. After a lot of consideration, I threw out my business card in order to redefine my identity. It was not OK with me that I lived up to the identity set by others. I felt like a dog dressed in a honeybee costume for the owner’s pleasure. I wanted to live a life with dignity and respect without a need to prove myself using a sophisticated business card and a business suit.
During my first dance performance in a dance workshop, Strictly Seattle, in 2001, I found myself in complete peace and comfort on stage, something that I had never experienced before. I felt that there was no one on stage but myself, though there were other dancers in the piece. I became myself, and dance was what I could die for. Since then, I have been taking a lifelong journey to get to know who I am and have been pulling things out of my reflections, mainly in what I refer to as solitude practice. These are what I call Young Sun Art: artifacts that come out of my continuous journey to get to know who I am.
I am interested in how I am reflected in the world and how the world is reflected in my body, soul, and spirit. The world is a set of different mirrors that reflect us with different points of view. I reflect my inner and outer self at the deepest level during solitude practice.
In solitude practice, I normally go to a dance studio or an empty room without preconceived ideas, where I permit myself to do whatever I want to do or to think. Sometimes, I spiritually isolate myself from the crowd and find a room within myself. Then, empty space throws thoughts, words, colors, patterns, movements, emotions, feelings, illusions, smells, visions, images, memories, or sounds from unknown sources. These are my thinking tools. I catch and save these resources to my computer, camera, sketchbook, notepad, recorder, and body in the form of sketches, drawings, files, movement materials, poems, videos, scribbles, and sound memos.
These become my base materials for the later creative process, which I liken to fishing in the calm river and storing the fish I have caught in different buckets. The fish travel back and forth between my consciousness and subconsciousness as I repeat forgetting and remembering them. These fish (my ideas) may not make any sense or possess no logical relationships within or between ideas. They look random and nonsensical out of nothing. If I am lucky enough, I get complete materials already with a clear concept that I do not want to refine further. They are my forgotten memories and my fractured self, as I am often surprised to find what has been hidden behind the images. Through my art, I see myself from the outside. My art is a materialized, visualized, and publicized self, and I love to watch this transformed self.
Not only do I like my transformed self, I like my physical self and my dance. I am dance. My dance with my own body is my pure and strong statement of who I am to the world. It is my own kingdom that I have built within myself. My dance is self-contained in my life and the self, and I take complete ownership of it. My body is my own unique instrument that I can play the best in the world. There is no identical artistic object like my body, and my dance is the most unique clothe I especially design for it. And it is the most unique music that I compose for my body as an instrument. I can carry my dance anywhere with me throughout my life. When I get old, it will get old with me. When I die, my dance will die with me. The memory can remain. It is my diamond, jewel, heart, flesh, blood, and living flower.
In my childhood, I used to collect things in my room. I especially liked empty boxes, dolls, empty bottles, pictures, shells, and memos. Once brought to my room, things hardly departed. If anyone was to clean this chaos, I screamed out to the person until everything was in its place (creative chaos) again. I also kept my diaries, music records, photos, cheap violin, old clothes, accessories, and buttons. I built a special relationship with these things, and they were my invaluable treasures. In my junior year in college, when my mother’s business went bankrupt, our family was forced to move out of our apartment without enough time to pack things. I hurried to put my treasure in big sacks and made sure that they would be kept secured in storage. After I returned from Seattle, where I spent three school terms as an exchange student, I found out that those sacks were gone, and the music records were full of fungus. Everything was gone. My father kept saying that he would buy me things again. However, my personal treasure was not something that could be bought from anywhere. They could not come back. Part of myself died at that time. My life felt wrecked and fractured. The ghosts of my dead dreams, memories, and history hovered deep inside my heart, crying out loud from time to time. Since then, I have been afraid of collecting material things in the world. Dance is in my body, I will not need to worry about losing it, and I will never let anyone take it out of me.
Life goes on without knowing when to end. I wished I had known earlier that life was not about finishing one thing and starting the next like well-arranged books on the bookshelf. Life is mysterious and chaotic, with layered time and space. The past exists with the present, and the present is a part of the future. My self continues to shift every minute, mingling with different times and being in relationships with others. My journey to get to know who I am will continue, and I will continue to visualize, interpret, and publicize my illusions and shadows under the name of art. I am melting myself into the art world. My art hopes to blossom everywhere. I will always try to be the happiest with my dance.
My art is a continuous journey in search of self-identity and an intrinsic effort to realize my self-reflection in more tangible and publicly accessible forms. I am very interested in my life, body, potential, and how I see things. “Look At Me!” That is my statement. I love who I am and what I do. I am dance, I am beautiful, and I am happy with myself. I am melting my life into art. When I completely disappear into the art world, the flower that will blossom after me will be named “Young Sun Art.”
In the middle of a busy intersection in Seoul in 1999, I happened to drop my business card. I was working in the Asian Wall Street Journal Seoul office. Suddenly, a question came into my mind like an epiphany: “Without this business card, do I not exist?” It was the very moment I discovered the vanity of life and my ambiguous self-identity. I realized how much my self-identity and happiness depended on the ideals set by others. When I did not meet those criteria, my self-esteem suffered. I also judged others according to those ideals such as appearance, titles, money, or socio-political power.
As I grew up in Korea during the 1980s and 1990s, I was told by my school teachers that the most desirable goal in life was to get a good GPA, to go to a good college, and to meet a good husband with power and money. Though a woman could get a good job, it was normal to quit her job once she married. It seemed like there were no other options in life. The schoolteachers taught us how to walk like a modest woman and how we should only give priority to the school grade. The students were not allowed to read other books (but I read a lot of books at home) that were not related to the college entrance exam and to make boyfriends. Also, it was OK to be without friends as long as we could get a good grade. I was not allowed time to get lost or look around on the set pathway “in order to live a good life.” Individual freedom was something that I would attain once I went to college. A school grade, a college name, a business title, and a husband’s social status seemed to define who I was. I did not have a chance to seriously consider who I was or how to live a life. I was neither motivated by the life philosophy set by the school system nor thought of finding my own way.
So, I graduated from college, studied abroad, and became a stereotyped cool-looking businesswoman like on a magazine page: I wore high heels, a business suit, and a square business suitcase. I could have just lived a life like that happily ever after, probably marrying any guy who was interested in me. However, when I dropped my business card, my presence felt as if it had suddenly disappeared. I was scared of who I was without any social titles. It might not be my authentic self that those Korean business people showed respect to, but it was my title in the company.
In 1997, Korea was under the Currency Crisis along with many other Asian countries. Many big companies, like the conglomerate Daewoo, went on a restructuring process, laying off many employees in managerial positions. Korean TV dramas reflected this social atmosphere. People who were once respected and followed by their junior employees in lower positions suddenly lost their dignity in front of them after they were fired from companies. Many of these wandered around Seoul subway stations as the homeless. It was the result of depending their identity and happiness on the social roles and titles rather than from the unemployment itself. Observing the Crisis, I had a sudden fear and disgust about the human relationship based on utilitarian purposes, which looked so fake, shallow, illusive, and inhuman.
My identity was replaced with what the society thought desirable. I had to find who I was and what I liked to do. Meanwhile, a song by a famous Korean singer-songwriter, Hae-Chul Shin, gave me a turning point in my life. The lyric says:
What do you really want, a thing that you can bet everything for?
Like in the song, I did not know what I wanted even after legally becoming an adult. I liked my work with my American boss at the American company, but that was not what I could die for. I lost the way to look at myself, because the society mainly taught me how to look at what others were doing and to pursue their happiness as mine. After a lot of consideration, I threw out my business card in order to redefine my identity. It was not OK with me that I lived up to the identity set by others. I felt like a dog dressed in a honeybee costume for the owner’s pleasure. I wanted to live a life with dignity and respect without a need to prove myself using a sophisticated business card and a business suit.
During my first dance performance in a dance workshop, Strictly Seattle, in 2001, I found myself in complete peace and comfort on stage, something that I had never experienced before. I felt that there was no one on stage but myself, though there were other dancers in the piece. I became myself, and dance was what I could die for. Since then, I have been taking a lifelong journey to get to know who I am and have been pulling things out of my reflections, mainly in what I refer to as solitude practice. These are what I call Young Sun Art: artifacts that come out of my continuous journey to get to know who I am.
I am interested in how I am reflected in the world and how the world is reflected in my body, soul, and spirit. The world is a set of different mirrors that reflect us with different points of view. I reflect my inner and outer self at the deepest level during solitude practice.
In solitude practice, I normally go to a dance studio or an empty room without preconceived ideas, where I permit myself to do whatever I want to do or to think. Sometimes, I spiritually isolate myself from the crowd and find a room within myself. Then, empty space throws thoughts, words, colors, patterns, movements, emotions, feelings, illusions, smells, visions, images, memories, or sounds from unknown sources. These are my thinking tools. I catch and save these resources to my computer, camera, sketchbook, notepad, recorder, and body in the form of sketches, drawings, files, movement materials, poems, videos, scribbles, and sound memos.
These become my base materials for the later creative process, which I liken to fishing in the calm river and storing the fish I have caught in different buckets. The fish travel back and forth between my consciousness and subconsciousness as I repeat forgetting and remembering them. These fish (my ideas) may not make any sense or possess no logical relationships within or between ideas. They look random and nonsensical out of nothing. If I am lucky enough, I get complete materials already with a clear concept that I do not want to refine further. They are my forgotten memories and my fractured self, as I am often surprised to find what has been hidden behind the images. Through my art, I see myself from the outside. My art is a materialized, visualized, and publicized self, and I love to watch this transformed self.
Not only do I like my transformed self, I like my physical self and my dance. I am dance. My dance with my own body is my pure and strong statement of who I am to the world. It is my own kingdom that I have built within myself. My dance is self-contained in my life and the self, and I take complete ownership of it. My body is my own unique instrument that I can play the best in the world. There is no identical artistic object like my body, and my dance is the most unique clothe I especially design for it. And it is the most unique music that I compose for my body as an instrument. I can carry my dance anywhere with me throughout my life. When I get old, it will get old with me. When I die, my dance will die with me. The memory can remain. It is my diamond, jewel, heart, flesh, blood, and living flower.
In my childhood, I used to collect things in my room. I especially liked empty boxes, dolls, empty bottles, pictures, shells, and memos. Once brought to my room, things hardly departed. If anyone was to clean this chaos, I screamed out to the person until everything was in its place (creative chaos) again. I also kept my diaries, music records, photos, cheap violin, old clothes, accessories, and buttons. I built a special relationship with these things, and they were my invaluable treasures. In my junior year in college, when my mother’s business went bankrupt, our family was forced to move out of our apartment without enough time to pack things. I hurried to put my treasure in big sacks and made sure that they would be kept secured in storage. After I returned from Seattle, where I spent three school terms as an exchange student, I found out that those sacks were gone, and the music records were full of fungus. Everything was gone. My father kept saying that he would buy me things again. However, my personal treasure was not something that could be bought from anywhere. They could not come back. Part of myself died at that time. My life felt wrecked and fractured. The ghosts of my dead dreams, memories, and history hovered deep inside my heart, crying out loud from time to time. Since then, I have been afraid of collecting material things in the world. Dance is in my body, I will not need to worry about losing it, and I will never let anyone take it out of me.
Life goes on without knowing when to end. I wished I had known earlier that life was not about finishing one thing and starting the next like well-arranged books on the bookshelf. Life is mysterious and chaotic, with layered time and space. The past exists with the present, and the present is a part of the future. My self continues to shift every minute, mingling with different times and being in relationships with others. My journey to get to know who I am will continue, and I will continue to visualize, interpret, and publicize my illusions and shadows under the name of art. I am melting myself into the art world. My art hopes to blossom everywhere. I will always try to be the happiest with my dance.
Image/Photo Work by Young-Sun Lee