Artwork text
The wind
has bent a single tree all the way to one side.
Branch and leaf alike
are swept to one side.
The wild grass
lies down as a white streak.
Not one blade resisting,
all to the same side.
A horse
and an old man
stand close to one another.
A single thatched house
lowers itself within the stone wall.
To lie down
is not to lose.
It is a way of giving the body to the wind.
The grass lies down
and the tree bends.
The old man, beside the horse,
keeps his feet on the earth in the end.
When the wind stops,
the grass rises again.
To endure
is not to keep from falling,
but to leave in the earth
the strength to rise again.
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.