I always think that relationships between people are the most challenging things in the world.

Introduction

Won Seoung Won majored in sculpture in Korea. When she went on to art school in Germany her intention was to work on large-scale art installations. However, as she says herself, she is small in stature and not physically strong, and consequently found it impossible to realise the immense scale of the projects she envisioned in her mind’s eye. It was then that she discovered collage and came to understand that this was a way in which to assemble expansive environments in a manageable way, using photographs. Many photographs. Hundreds of them, meticulously pieced together to create fantasy worlds that reshape and recontextualise fragments from the exterior world to speak to the inner realm of hopes and fears.

While collage has its antecedence in ancient China and Japan and, more recently, in the pastimes of the nineteenth-century bourgeois parlour, it was with Modernism that it became a recognised artform. In its shifting perspectives, it has been seen as a conjugation of painting and sculpture, intimately bound up in the birth of Cubism. In its juxtaposition of disparate iconography, it became a potent instrument of both the political and psychoanalytical avant-garde: of Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism. And, later, Pop Art’s knowing flirtations with mass media. As the art historian Diane Waldman expressed it: “collage has brought the incongruous into meaningful congress with the ordinary.”

It is this ability to create allegorical scenarios portraying a personal sensibility through the recombination of photographic fragments garnered from everyday life that marks out Won Seoung Won’s visually seductive oeuvre. As with dreams, where shards of conscious and unconscious memory combine and recombine in the narrative-building networks of the brain, her images are both gestaltic and enigmatic. Each picture takes an episode from the lives of her and her friends and distils it to a symbolic essence through which to visualise her conceptual and affective analysis. Animals and birds, trees and rocks, whole landscapes become a lexicon through which to recount stories that speak to the challenges of being and feeling, of remembering and reinterpreting. Of connecting with and understanding others.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

Your earliest work was made in collaboration with fellow students in Germany. How did ‘Dreamroom’ come about?

When I began my studies in Germany, I lived in a very small eight-square-metre room. It was like a shoe box. Every night, as I fell asleep, I imagined it opening out and transforming into my happy place. When I shared this idea with my friends, they told me of similar dreams they had. Inspired by this, I decided to visualise their dream rooms as a gift to my friends. Later, when I exhibited the work, I found that many people longed for such a happy place, even when they lived in large houses.

And did you also create your own dream room?

Yes! I found Germany a cold place and, being a poor student, I couldn’t afford to heat my room all the time. So, I turned my room into a tropical rainforest. I went to the glasshouses of a botanical garden and took photographs. In the artwork, I imagine myself sipping a cold juice and feeling exhausted by the heat.

Tell me about ‘My Age of Seven’. What were you exploring in this autobiographical series?

I have had an anxiety disorder since I was young, but it didn’t significantly affect my daily life. However, when I returned to Korea after eleven years studying in Germany my anxiety began to intensify as I reconnected with my family. I was reminded of when I was seven years old… We lived in an extended family with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and more. There were severe conflicts between my mother’s and father’s sides of the family: daily fights, occasional violence. When I turned eight, my parents left, seeking independence in a new home away from the wider family. Even so, their relationship remained strained. I had found a sense of peace in Germany but returning to Korea and these family disputes rekindled my anxiety.

[Left] © Won Seoung Won ‘Oversleeping’ 2010 from the series ‘My Age of Seven’
[Right] © Won Seoung Won ‘Bed-Wetter’s Laundering’ 2010 from the series ‘My Age of Seven’

I read in psychology books about ways to heal the effects of childhood trauma and decided to create new memories by visualising them. I imagined a brave and lonely girl in a fairy tale, searching for her mother.

Did you find this therapeutic?

I was happy all the time I was making that work. Every day, I stored these new stories in my mind as fresh memories without the fights and violence. That said, I did also want to capture the nuance of those lonely and challenging times.

When the work was exhibited, I spoke about my childhood feelings with my mother for the first time. She was surprised to learn that I remembered so much. Afterwards, I felt more grounded… but it did not last long. Six months after the exhibition, my mother had an accident and passed away.

In ‘Character Episode I’ you consider certain human characteristics that are, perhaps, less than laudable…

I had always had a positive view of people, believing that everyone is fundamentally good and kind. However, after my mother passed away, our family faced financial difficulties. It was challenging for me to handle these issues alone, and I discovered then people I truly came to dislike. I decided to create artworks based on five people who had made my life so difficult. They were of five types: the boastful rich, the perfectionist who imposes perfection on others, the stubborn egoist, those obsessed with possessions, and those who demand a rigorous sense of responsibility. But there was a problem – until then, I had directly included the protagonists in my stories by photographing them. This was something I couldn’t do in this case, because then those people would find out that I disliked them. So, I depicted their characters allegorically as different animals and fantasy situations.

[Left] © Won Seoung Won ‘The Ark of Obsession’ 2013 from the series ‘Character Episode I’
[Right] © Won Seoung Won ‘The Star Apartment of the Eldest Son’ 2013 from the series ‘Character Episode I’

Can you give an example?

‘The Ark of Obsession’ is the story of a person consumed by the desire for possessions. This is someone who keeps buying houses in various countries. I imagine that the Earth is on the brink of destruction and the land on which to place their houses has disappeared. So, they lash small boats together and stack their many houses onboard, securing them with ropes to prevent them from slipping away. It is an image of drifting in search of land where the houses can once more settle. I know someone in my circle of acquaintances obsessed with collecting houses like that.

Is that personal experience an essential part of your creativity?

I always think that relationships between people are the most challenging things in the world. Even as I get older and gain more experience, human relationships remain for me the most difficult. Why is it so tough? And yet, when conflicts arise among my friends or when there are interpersonal situations that are hard to understand… that is when my mind starts creating fantasies. The individuals and situations in my personal experience are metamorphosed into animals and landscapes, unfolding in my imagination as surrogates for real people.

I doubt if I could create my work on my own. It is as if people throw stories to me amid the emotional chemistry I feel with those who are around me. Without real individuals in actual situations, there would be nothing to catalyse my imagination.

In ‘The Sight of the Others’ you turn your attention – and your imagination – to certain professional groups defined by their various career choices…

I injured my back while mountain climbing in winter because I wanted to photograph snow-covered trees to use in my artworks. I ended up flat on my back for a whole six months. It was a very challenging time for me. I had never regretted becoming an artist before, but during that period, I regretted it a lot. It seemed all my friends had professions that guaranteed social status and economic stability. It made me wonder why I had chosen to be an artist enduring physical injuries, constant financial struggles, and the need to work such long hours every day. We had started out from a similar point, why were they now standing in such different places from me?

So, I decided to create artworks visualising my friends’ professions that I so envied. But what does a stable and glamorous career look like? I decided to depict each as a landscape. I also increased the size of my works to a width of three metres. I had always wanted to create larger pieces but hesitated because of the high cost and lack of storage space. But, after the accident on the mountain, I thought: Let’s just do what I want!

[Left] © Won Seoung Won ‘The Experimental Tree of Pharmacists’ 2017 from the series ‘The Sight of the Others’
[Right] © Won Seoung Won ‘The Windy Field of Professors’ 2017 from the series ‘The Sight of the Others’

Some of my friends now worked in university. In ‘The Windy Field of Professors’ I depict these universities as wooden shacks of various sizes. The professors appear as animals with horns; the horns symbolising their great knowledge. Those with the political skills of personal ambition climb onto the roof to display their authority. But there are professors who go out into the field, organising groups, and taking care of the dry grass (students): creating structure and tending the grass that has fallen in the wind. And among all of this, there are dogs and cats representing those alternative educators who do not have institutional horns.

How do you go about making your images?

Even though I work digitally, the process is very hands-on. I begin with a story and make some rough sketches to develop the ideas visually. Then, I go on long trips to find the things I need to photograph for my pictures – animals, trees, rocks, landscapes… I must take a lot of pictures from which I later select the ones that best suit the story, because a single work can involve up to 1,500 different layers. Creating the individual elements and marrying them together in Photoshop is a meticulous process. It involves many ten-hour days, during which time I am constantly thinking about the protagonists in the artwork. The long hours have the advantage of providing periods of meditation in which I eventually come to better understand each situation.

Thinking deeply about people helps me understand their problems and that makes it easier to get along with them. In ‘The Sight of the Others’ I characterised jobs that had seemed to me to be really good. But I know that if I had chosen one of those jobs, it would have been very hard for me. They come with a lot of stress and responsibility and I’m a sensitive person.

[Left] © Won Seoung Won ‘Nurtured Childhood’ 2021 from the series ‘The Inaudible Audible’
[Right] © Won Seoung Won ‘Grand Waterfall’ 2021 from the series ‘The Inaudible Audible’

In ‘The Inaudible Audible’ you appear to turn away from the human to consider the ‘natural’ world…

From this work onward, I stopped using animals to symbolise various characters. With the Covid pandemic restrictions, photographing in zoos abroad became impossible and the animals in Korean zoos just didn’t look at all happy. So, in this series, trees become the main allegorical characters. This series reflects upon the way in which mainstream society draws non-mainstream individuals to itself, and why people aspire to success. Of course, these works are all inspired by things I have observed in my surroundings.

Why do you call this series ‘The Inaudible Audible’?

I had always chosen my titles intuitively. But I felt that this was becoming monotonous. For this exhibition I wanted to break away from straightforward titles to create more ambiguous and metaphorical ones. There is a paradox in the way ambitious people often feel uncomfortable talking about their desire to succeed. Perhaps, they fear it sounds too materialistic. In this series, the titles suggest narratives in which everyone secretly holds ambitions they pretend not to want, even though it is, essentially, something we all desire.

I can illustrate this idea with the image called ‘Within the Realm of Possibilities’. This is a story about the mainstream. There are seven trees (seven people) with white branches symbolising their strength – the more white branches, the stronger the person. They form their own circle around the bright blue water forming a strong mainstream community. Meanwhile, the shining blue waters flow in all directions, influencing other trees that stand outside that circle.

Is this an idea that came from a real-life experience you had?

Once, at a big party, I saw a famous celebrity surrounded by a circle of people. There was plenty of space between the people in the circle, so anyone could have joined, but no one did. They just hung back and looked on enviously.

Then, one of the inner circular invited another guest in and introduced them. It made me think: to join the mainstream, must you be selected – recommended by, and to, other mainstream individuals? It was watching this situation that inspired me to create an image satirising the conventions of the mainstream world.

Your most recent series, ‘The Freezing Point of All’, continues this focus on the natural world, but this time in the cold of winter…

If ‘The Inaudible Audible’ dealt with the outward desires of people, ‘The Freezing Point of All’ explores the complex feelings of superiority and inferiority that exist within individuals regardless of their relative status. This series began with a question I asked myself: why does someone who seems to have everything still harbour feelings of inferiority?

What led you to the metaphor of ice and snow?

I once worked with someone who considered themselves very superior. It was tough to be around them, like facing a huge iceberg. Their cold and overly logical behaviour just became exhausting. But then, one day I saw a vulnerable side; they seemed fragile. And they realised I had seen this, and after that they changed a bit. The iceberg softened, became more rounded, less toweringly elevated… allowing a place perhaps where others might grow. And it became easier to be around them.

[Left] © Won Seoung Won ‘Small Well-rounded Pride’ 2022 from the series ‘The Freezing Point of All’
[Right] © Won Seoung Won ‘Lofty Hill’ 2022 from the series ‘The Freezing Point of All’

I think people use iciness as a defence mechanism. They wrap themselves in a frosty shell of superiority in order to hide their feelings of inferiority. I believe we all have some kind of ‘superior ice’, but that our ‘freezing point’ varies with different situations. In my experience, I’ve come to understand that the more overt the demeanour of superiority, the stronger the sense of inferiority that lies beneath it. That is why, in these artworks, ice symbolises superiority.

In making your work, what have you learned about yourself that you did not previously understand?

Ultimately, I have come to realise that anyone, once they have experienced the situation of another person, can begin to empathise with them. Maybe I continue my work to understand my friends better. Our psychological landscapes – both theirs and mine – seem to be the key to understanding each other.

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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