Byunghee Sung

 

 

▷ How did your work with the body and form begin?
For practical reasons, I stopped painting for years. When I returned, I decided not to paint to satisfy others or offer consolation, but with absolute honesty toward myself. I began drawing out emotions and memories within me. Bodies, bones, and raw forms became my language for revealing sensations that reason could never explain. Many viewers found the work frightening, but those sensations beneath an orderly exterior were my very self.

 

▷ Why do you focus on wounds and anxiety?
Anxiety may be a response to life’s uncertainty. My life is filled with anxiety and wounds, and painting is how I endure it. Wounds and trauma do not remain in the past; they exist in the present and draw me back to the canvas. Yet honesty differs from explicitness. Rather than exposing wounds directly, I transform them through symbols and metaphors, holding uncontrollable emotions with relentless brushstrokes.

 

 

 

 

 

▷ Where do your work and 《HUMAL》 meet?
The animals I paint do not depict nature; they embody instinct and the unconscious within humans. The boundary between human and animal lies within each person, where consciousness and the unconscious, reason and instinct, intersect. Memories, wounds, trauma, ego, and id become entangled, creating monstrous beings. Eyes, hearts, eggs, lizards, and the Sain-geom symbolize memory, emotion, anxiety, and desire. Together, they form a record of conflict, purification, and coexistence—an anatomical chart of my life.

 

▷ What do you hope viewers feel?
I hope my work gives viewers strength to endure. Kafka taught me that speaking honestly about darkness can comfort someone else. I want viewers to know that someone is here, struggling to share the pain of this wounded life and endure it alongside them. To be wounded is human, and so is bearing those wounds and continuing to live.