Hyo Young Chu
South Korea, 1996
Thesis: The Ribbon is smiling
The Ribbon of my words
These prints are drawings of word(s)—adorned with colours, standing in front of patterned backgrounds, hair tied with ribbons, with an angry gaze or eyes resting softly, smiling.
The list could go on depending on what you see. It could be that the striped pattern making up the shape of the letter “B”, already hinders you from reading the rest of the 4 letters. Or because it might take some time for you to recognise the shoe with a smiling ribbon on it, is actually an “N”. Or because the obvious piece of bone on the right-hand corner catches your eyes, distracting you from recognising the letters that complete the word: “B,O,N,E,S.”
I realised that a frequent approach to my practice is hiding letters and displaying writing in forms that make it illegible as a result. Feeling the lack of ability in speech that is efficient and articulate, and at the same time, still dependent on language, I had to seek for my own medium to continue mingling with words.
The quick small sketches that spell the words:
Sad Said
Silhouettes
Soft
Bones
Entangled
Buttons
Fleeting
Thoughts
Voiceless
Faces
Missed
Connection
A thing
Tangible
Unreal
in my sketchbook, became adorned, abstracted, exaggerated. Taking the tangency born out of intuition in the process of doodling to refinement and decorating them with accessories of colours and patterns is a method that shapes me and my work.
