Artwork text
The wide sea
rose up in the color of dry grass.
In the middle of the sea
a black rock opens into a round hollow,
and at its very center
two people crouch facing one another.
Their heads buried in each other's shoulders,
they gather small, like a single mass.
A small island,
two small people.
Yet in this narrow place
the weight of the whole world can be felt.
The wind is strong,
the sea is wide.
People are small.
And so they gather closer still.
To endure
is not to overcome the vast world,
but perhaps to lean on each other
just enough not to fall.
Key context
Byun Shi-Ji was a Korean modern and contemporary painter who treated Jeju’s Fūdo not as scenery but as a condition of existence. Through solitude, waiting, wind and the colour of dried grass, his art formed a glocal modernism rooted in Korea and open to the world.