My art stems from the challenges that arise from inequality, social injustice, feminism, and environmental issues. In society, each individual’s story reflects and affects the whole community. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. The pursuit of happiness in a course of suffering inspires my artistic approach and is a recurring theme. I twist or critique this problem in small and large-scale artworks and portray them using abstract symbols.
The COVID-19 virus lead to a pandemic worldwide. All the patterns of human life around the world have been radically altered in just a few months. The virus not only changed modern life, but it will also force us to move faster into a future we have imagined. Today, technology is going beyond the mechanistic toward artificial intelligence. We rely on technology for work, our creativity, communication and… in our everyday life. Our physical body (may be) restricted to the house because of quarantine, (but) our mind has no limitation in the digital world. My concern is how we keep and manage our humanity in this digital world.
While in quarantine in the square box of my apartment since March, I’ve been thinking about this situation. We are physically divided by the Covid-19 virus, but we are mentally connected in the digital world through Zoom, Facetime, Skype, Google Meet, etc.
As one example, The world where we are living; Color Wave is an acrylic painting with multiple canvases. It contains hidden images that you can trigger with a cell phone to augment reality. It shows how we are connected mentally in this contemporary world. Even when we are physically remote, we are able to connect and to share ideas in the virtual world.
Sohyoung Park, Home Sick, 2020. Video. 5 minute 42 seconds.
Homesick is a video work that implies anxiety and depression while I was isolated in my apartment by myself for nine months. Homesick has an ambiguous double meaning as someone that misses my home country because I currently live aboard and at same time someone that misses mother nature, who currently lives in the digital world rather than physical world.
Sohyoung Park, Ms. Color Pack, 2019. Neon. 27 x 12 inches.
Sohyoung Park, Ms. Color Pack, 2019. Neon. 27 x 12 inches.
Ms. Color Pack is an artistic persona I created, and she is the leader of a coalition called “Walking Boobs”. They pursue personal affinity rather than biologically based identity. Her goal is to build an ecofeminism utopia that includes everyone regardless of gender, race, class and species in the digital world.
Sohyoung Park, The world where we are living; Color Wave, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 87 x 55 inches. Installation view.
Sohyoung Park, The world where we are living; Color Wave, 2020.
Acrylic on canvas. 87 x 55 inches. AR demonstration.
Sohyoung Park, The world where we are living; Color Wave, 2020.
Acrylic on canvas. 87 x 55 inches. AR demonstration.
Sohyoung Park, The world where we are living; Color Wave, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 87 x 55 inches. Trigger image.
Instruction Note! How to access AR
Please use the Facebook or Instagram links below on your cellphone. Point camera at the painting labeled “Trigger image” above, then you will see the hidden AR animation on top of the painting. Once you trigger the image you can move your camera right, left, forward, and/or backward to see the whole animation.
Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fbcameraeffects/tryit/428723175120092/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ar/428723175120092/
You can also find the access on my Instagram page sohyoung11, click the smile button on the middle and go to the page World where we are living, and click the Try it button.
Sohyoung Park, The world where we are living; Color Wave, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 87 x 55 inches. Video of installation and AR demonstration. 40 seconds.
Sohyoung Park, The Angel of Civil Rights_John Lewis, 2020.
Sohyoung Park, All Colors in Black, 2020. Black light on acrylic paintings. 77 x 88 inches. Installation view.
All Colors in Black is an acrylic painting that I mixed all different colors into a muddy blackish color and layered them on to the canvas. It represents a water wave when you throw a stone into a body of water and the ripple spreads throughout the whole pond creating a ripple effect. I installed black light to illuminate hope in this dark time.
