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[Artist Statement]

When I entered university, I left my family and began living alone in an old semi-basement room in Seoul. The room was filled with secondhand appliances from a recycling shop and the same desk I had used since elementary school. Although I had my share of worries at twenty, the room overflowed with dreams and happiness. I loved that room, and I loved who I was in it, so I began to draw the inside of the room.

The form of a comfortable room differs for everyone. Some feel calm when the bed or chair is piled with things as long as the floor is clear, others need their desk to be tidy even if objects scatter across the floor. The reason I have focused mainly on scenes from “inside the home” is because that is where I feel most at peace. Even for those who come home late and leave early for work, the home accepts them, it is where tension dissolves. When the heart feels frayed or anxious, the disorder of the room often reflects it. Tidying up, even a little, can sometimes bring the mind to rest.

If “safety” and “relief” were to take form, I think it would be each become a person’ s “room”. I began drawing such room of comfort, but at some point, I realized I was also speaking about anxiety.

Events that suddenly erase a person’s life or daily routine still happen somewhere in the world or right beside us. Disasters, accidents pandemics, wars – forces beyond human control. The fear that something might happen at any time lies quietly at the bottom of my heart. Since having a child, that fear has doubled along with the happiness I want to protect. At times, even the smallest worry ripples through my everyday life. What I once thought of as ordinary life, the same faces, the same places revealed itself to be as fragile as a building made of paper.

Now, rather than drawing my own room, I look for rooms that could belong to anyone. I avoid color so that anyone might project their own daily life onto the scene, and I think about the things that someone, somewhere keeps repeating in their “usual” days. An umbrella by the entrance, glasses by the pillow, crumpled receipts, clothespins rolling on the floor, and objects resting on top of books stacked unread. Seeing that “we are all the same” brings a small comfort, yet the threads tracing the room’s outlines sway slightly when someone comes close, as if one wrong pull could unravel everything into a blank white nothingness. The size and texture of anxiety differ from person to person, within this white room, some may find only peace.

If it’s something that cannot be erased, I want to face that anxiety, look it in the eye, and take its hand. I want to let relief and unease coexist. I hope to share even a little understanding with those who live with similar fears. With such feelings, I continue to create these white rooms.

Yu Sora