Artist statement_secret&pink ribbon
My work is a process of healing.
I had a secret, which I cannot tell anyone. I became solitary and depressed. I had to tell somebody about my secret somehow. Artwork was the only thing that could help me. While making “Growing-secret”, secrets did not make me feel depressed.
Most people have a secret. Then, what is a secret? It is about more than not telling itself to other people. For a secret is different from one's privacy. If someone has a secret, it is not the person's individual problem but something related to somebody else. Because a secret will never exist, if there's only one person in the world.
We cannot tell everything to everybody. We also say certain limited things to a particular person. We cannot simply consider an untold story a secret. For a secret is totally different from telling your private thoughts. A secret has occurred, it is an event that is deeply connected with personal things. However, what makes a difference between a secret and privacy is that a secret can make you feel depressed and guilty. When we can separate these two things, we can surely realize what a secret is.
People with a secret are may not be willing to meet with other people and have difficulties in developing the relationships with others. They become solitary and can easily slip into depression. However, they are reluctant to talk about their depression or stresses. The moment they start to have a secret, they try to get as far away from the relationship and develop personal disorders. They have physical symptoms as well. Studies show a higher developing rate of cancers caused by low immunity due to stress.
Even though people having a secret are struggling from mental, physical disorders, they cannot snap out of it unless a secret is gotten rid of. If they go on with their lives without considering it, other spiritual and physical problems occur.
Lastly, we can redevelop after revealing the secret. When we have a secret we feel uncomfortable with considering ourselves a burden. We can be positive about our outlook, develop better personal, interacting behaviors with relationships in both positive and negative ways.
We should accept the truth that a secret has occurred in social relationships, is different from privacy to understand it. Whether or not, we can separate a secret from privacy, depends upon our willingness about sharing ourselves with others in a relationship. The more we want to get to know each other, the closer we become. And that represents on the surface as much as we want to talk about our secret to other people. So, the expectancy differs from people's relationships and the area of it belongs to the range of our privacy. So to speak, privacy is about something that is in outside the expectancy and you don't need to talk because it is not people's expectancy. However, a secret actually exists in the expectancy. It is a hidden story placed in the scope of our hope about others. That's way having a secret can be heavy and stressful when we deliberate upcoming disappointments or sense of betrayal after displaying the secret.
You can be naturally interested in someone who you cherish or take care of and want to know what is happening to him or her. It is very natural that you be curious about other people's affairs. Everybody has a desire, they want to know about something happening to others whether it is a lot or little
Three-year-old kids have no conception of a secret. They speak whatever they know or want to talk about. But five-year-old kids begin to have a sense of not telling something unfavorable to them. They can figure out and develop themselves in a relationship from understanding secrets. Having secrets is a phenomenon of the entire humankind and one of the processes of becoming an adult.
All my works, “Secret” and “Hidden” are the serial efforts to disclose. It has a boundary between my various private events from the past and things that I want to hide. Also, I wanted to hide my negative aspects like worrying about how we decide the quantity of the expectancy that we measure to each other in a relationship. However, I still wanted to share my stories with other people, who I love, so, I wanted to show these aspects through my works.
“Pink ribbon” is about elders looking back to their childhood and longing for purity. Pink is innocent and incorrupt, but also fake and sexual. Ribbon was created for beauty, but the hairy part of the ribbon awkwardly and ridiculously takes away the beauty of the ribbon. Pink ribbons should make people feel happy, but in my work people who wear it looks tired and sad. But it looks not just sad, but hopeful.
When I used pink in my works, I was not acquainted with the complexity and controversy of this particular color. The color pink is any of the colors between bluish red (purple) to red, of medium to high brightness and of low to moderate saturation. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love."
‘As it appears in nature, we associate pink with flowers, with the sweet, light, transient, and rare. In the cultural context, we associate it with the pleasant, the delicate, the erotic, the dream-like, the unreal, the false, and the artificial, with exaggeration, excess, eccentricity, and luxury. But we also associate it with poverty and pain, and unimaginative mass-produced goods. ‘ <From Babara Nemitz, “Pink”, 2006,p.40>
The “Uncertainty” and “ vagueness” of the color “pink” explains my artwork “ Pink-ribbon” better in one’s heart than in one’s mind. As time goes by as an adult, I realize that I don’t remember anything about my childhood. So I made an effort to be a child again and I realized that it is impossible. However, I want to return to the innocence of childhood eagerly, so I can think purely. It is because I could not accept myself as a self-centered and greedy adult. “Pink-ribbon” is my effort to return to my childhood, so it looks not only sad and tired, but also hopeful.
I use colored hair and the knitting machine to create my own fabric/surface. I use a knitting machine to create the unique surfaces and patterns. Fluffy surfaces in my piece looks lovely and adorable, but rough and stiff hair parts are repulsed and hurtful. I was trying to use every element of my pink ribbon pieces to contradict, but be harmonious.