HWANG Hye-Jung

We inevitably face such feelings of anxiety, resentment, shame and etc. when our desires are failed. When wanting to escape from these negative feelings, I have been touching my eyebrows from my childhood. I brush hairs of my eyebrows with my fingers mercilessly as if I am an absolute being in this refuge called ‘eyebrows’, and finds pleasure without knowing a specific reason. I expect to find the same pleasure through my practice.

 I believe that the reason that most of my works noticeably have tactual elements comes from my personal experience of finding emotional comfort in tactual stimulation. While the subject of my practice is visualizing my specific experience of escaping the reality, the actual act of progressing my practice also means as an escape to me. When the repetitive actions of uncomplicated labor are required in my practice, I become to focus on my practice in depth rather than to sense anxiety in the reality. In other words, the time that I work on my practice is an escape from the reality’s pressure.

The fantasied refuge, my practice, is like my world of unconsciousness. In my practice, I lose ‘me’, composed of other’s expectations in the reality, and reveal unfulfilled hopes and desires to find ‘the other me’. This allows me to enjoy spending time alone and to go back to the time of freedom, my childhood. Things that make me painful are denied, totally forgotten, or defied. Although ‘real me’ without clothes of the notions can sometimes look odd and unrealistic, it embodies ‘the most pure and truthful me’. Therefore, practicing art does not just mean an escape from the reality in my practice. It is actually an act to recover ‘ostracized and lost me’ from the reality.

HWANG Hye-Jung
Born in 1986, Seoul, Korea

EDUCATION
2014 M.F.A. Textiles, Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom
2011 B.F.A. Textile Art & Fashion Design, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2016 The 1st Seoul International Craft/Art Fair, SETEC, Seoul, Korea
2016 Bu-Sang Cheong-Nyeon, National Assembly of The Republic of Korea, Seoul, Korea
2016 Yap, Gallery Ilho, Seoul, Korea
2016 Solace, Cyartgallery Cube, Seoul, Korea
2015 Yap Hashtag, Gallerydaon, Seoul, Korea
2014 Wells Art Contemporary 2014 Exhibition, Wells Art Contemporary, Wells, United Kingdom
2014 5TH Floor Fabricators, Hockney Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2010 Rainbow Exhibition, Gallery Skyyeon, Seoul, Korea