Artwork text
All is darkness, all fierce waves.
Under a black sky
white spray rises,
and the sea boils.
In the midst of it,
a few black birds
surge against the current.
Spreading their wings,
they withstand the crashing waves.
So as not to be driven back,
so as not to sink.
To bend
is to keep from breaking,
and to rise
is to keep from vanishing.
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.