ENTRY DESCRIPTION
“Internalized power of state” is the key topic of my work. “Internalized power of state” refers to the ‘anti-communism ideology’ internally engraved in individuals by the South Korean government, using the particular situation of the nation - North-and-South confrontation whilst truce. I aim to delve into how power of state functions within each individual and reveal how internalized power of the state is reproduced and expanded by the society and the individuals through my works.

To demonstrate this posing problem, I used Archival , Decoupage and Collage. I had been collecting and making decoupage and collages of photographs documenting events that had happened in Korea and texts with historical meanings in art.

I approached and conveyed internalized power of state in two perspectives. The first is the individual as the receiver of oppression, while the second is the Individual as the agent of the oppression.


1)

focuses on the individual as the agent of repression. In this work, I intended to show the power of state performing real physical power through individuals with this work. Here, the anonymity of the power of state is symbolized by cutting out the person or the background within the picture. More so, the collaged black paper beneath where the cut was shows how the power of state recruits individuals and functions by doing so.

First, the black paper reveals the state of individuals whom are eradicated of their concreteness in order to perform for the power of state. They exist as a tool for the power of state, with their beliefs, consciousness, and human emotions lost. Moreover, the black paper contains the fear and terror constantly experienced by those who are under oppression from the power of the state. These emotions stem from the surrounding surveillance, brutality, and death. As for the

AUTHOR
While I began learning art from the age of 11, due to the nature of art education in South Korea, I understood art only as a mere form of acquisition of a technique and was trained accordingly. I never had a chance to practice critical thinking or exchange diverse opinions in discussion settings until I went to university.
I majored in Oriental Painting in Seoul National University as an undergraduate, yet even the school had teachings of traditional techniques and single-sided evaluations on these techniques as its main educational policies. Over the last couple of years, it was a strenuous task of mine to break the uniform, narrow-minded view of art that had grown within me under such an environment. It had not been long since I was able to have an overall understanding of contemporary art and form my own specific critical awareness and practice of art. I now major in sculpture at Royal College of Art.

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