Artwork text
The sun is high, and the surface is bright.
But the wind is fierce.
The tree leans to one side, and the thatched house lowers itself. The old man walks
on, his back bent, leaning on a staff.
A bright day does not make the hardships of life disappear.
The wind is the years that push a person away, an inescapable history, the weight of
life that comes to everyone.
The old man does not stand and fight the wind. He lowers himself and goes forward,
one step at a time.
He bends so as not to fall; he leans on the staff so as not to stop.
To endure is not to wait for a windless day, but perhaps to keep one's own way,
even within the wind.
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.