Artwork text
On a small hillock, a whole household is gathered.
A house and a tree,
a horse and a puppy,
and a person.
The person bends at the waist to greet the smallest one;
the tree bends toward the house,
and the horse grazes nearby.
Everything in the picture
bends a little, turning toward one another.
Far off, a single boat is still at sea,
but this hillock is the warm place to which that one boat will return.
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.