Waving home
Hi Kyung Eun
The cloth covering the window is
A wave that doesn't conceal completely, nor open.
I endure many nights
Looking at your shadow coming over the cloth
And the wall reflecting the ripple.
-An excerpt from the artist's poem-
I remember homes through sceneries outside three windows. One is the living rooms I saw through the semi-transparent curtains of the room where I grew up. Another is the houses in the narrow alley, filled with the sound of people living there, over the balcony of the share house where I lived for a short period. And the last is a corridor of a small apartment in front of my current studio house and swaying trees beyond, alongside other buildings.
Looking back on why I remember these sceneries as my home, I realized that I looked at other houses through the window when I felt like I was standing outside although I was inside the home. I still don't know what I was seeking at the moment. Was it warmth, comfort, an image of a complete house, or an equally precarious home?
I have been taught that a house is the firmest thing humans can have. But for me, the home wasn't so simple. I have been moving between cities from one to the other side of the earth, and having different forms of house members: family, strangers, and alone. Sometimes I felt comfortable, sometimes extremely lonely, and sometimes frustrated and wanted to run out. The home was always somewhere, but it wasn't always there. Sometimes it seems not to exist.
Homes were not as stable as I had hoped. Nevertheless, it was where an unstable me could stay in such a way. I'm painting a portrait of a waving home with a view seen through the window.
photo credit @pierrecastig