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How did memories of a hanok become a forest?
Myungsoo Yi’s work begins with memories of childhood in a traditional Korean house. Light passing through paper windows, glimpses of the outdoors through worn doors, and the quiet texture of old interiors form the foundation of her visual language. Rather than reconstructing those scenes as they were, she transforms them into imagined spaces where memory can return in another form.
That is why her work may first appear as a forest, but it is not simply landscape painting. What emerges on the surface is closer to an inner landscape, shaped by memory, sensation, and emotional residue. The spaces in her paintings feel familiar, yet they resist exact identification. Viewers are invited not to locate a specific place, but to recognize an atmosphere that echoes something of their own.
Burned hanji becomes a language of form
For Myungsoo Yi, hanji is far more than a material. It is a surface that carries time, ritual, and personal memory. She burns, scorches, and layers the paper, allowing marks and traces to guide the image as it develops. The process is not only a way of making a picture. It is also a way of registering time and experience on the surface itself.
Chance plays an essential role here. The density of the burn marks changes with direction and duration, and unexpected forms appear alongside intended ones. Yi does not erase those accidents. She allows them to remain and become part of the work. As a result, each composition holds both control and unpredictability. In that balance, her process comes close to the logic of nature itself: ordered, but never fixed.
Why do these layered patterns feel like a forest?
Myungsoo Yi does not describe a forest literally. Instead, she translates its rhythms into lines, planes, tones, and repeated structures. Certain forms may recall branches, leaves, shadows, or light, yet they never settle into direct representation. Layer after layer, the surface grows through subtle variation. Similar patterns recur, but never in exactly the same way.
This is where the depth of her work resides. Her paintings are calm, but they are never static. Up close, small differences begin to appear. From a distance, those details gather into a larger movement. Repetition is present, but it never becomes mechanical. Structure is there, but it never turns rigid. Because of this, her work does not depict nature as an image to be observed from outside. It evokes nature as a living rhythm, one that expands, shifts, and restores itself over time.
How does her work hold the feeling of recovery?
In Myungsoo Yi’s practice, the forest is not simply a beautiful setting. It is a place of restoration. It reflects the resilience she has encountered in nature during moments of personal difficulty. That sense of recovery does not appear as a theme declared outright. It is embedded in the work’s material presence: in the scorched marks, in the layered textures, and in the slow accumulation of forms that suggest something broken can still find a new balance.
This is why the work leaves more than a sense of calm. It also carries quiet strength. Yi does not present healing as a polished or resolved state. Instead, she shows how traces remain, and how those traces can become part of renewal. Her forests are places of pause, but they are also spaces that gather strength. They remind us that recovery is not the absence of wounds, but the ability to move forward while carrying their imprint.
If you’d like to see more works by the artist:
🌐 Visit the artist’s website
📸 See more on Instagram
