"This work is a collaborative piece I produced with a traditional fan-making master. Each folding fan was carefully crafted, colored and arranged to complete the scene. Using the traditional motif of the fan, I tried to reinterpret the meaning of true-view landscape painting, through which painters of the Joseon Dynasty sought not to just describe the look of nature but to portray the essence of nature itself. Koreans traditionally painted landscapes onto fans and I, reversely, use the fans themselves to build a landscape, thus juxtaposing the relationship of fans and landscape.
The woods made with paper fans overlapping like fish scales suggest a self-portrait of a gloomy psychology as well as an expression of various complex emotions such as inner fear and anguish that restrain me. Depicting a very fundamental human reverence and fear toward the sublime, dark, and ever changing nature of the night forests and a human being who has to walk her way against it, I tried to look at and get close to my true inner self."
Lee JeeYoung