Existing comment:
ARA KOH
Inquiry of Breathing
Ceramic (stoneware)
23 x 45 x 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist
ARTIST STATEMENT
I speak Korean, English, and clay. My studio practice is a form of translation. Working with clay is a vehicle for memory, honesty, and reflection. I translate the invisible and the amorphous into something visible and solid. A balance between polarities: light and heavy, dense and loose, ephemeral and concrete. There is room for awe and even for childhood trauma, fading or relived. My sculpture encapsulates the dialogue of internal memories and external landscapes. Making is reliving fading traumatic memory as a landscape painting.
Questioning how architecture and landscape hold humanity, I think about my body contained in spaces, my body as a container, and the space being contained in the larger body of humanity. That experience questions the self in relationship with space. This body of work claims my position of authority -- a space that is my own space. It asks about my identity as an artist, a daughter, and a human in the most honest and genuine way. |