Artwork text
The house is empty.
It remains alone by the sea.
Someone is already
leaving beyond the sea.
A tree lifts its arm
and stretches it long over the water.
Go well, it says.
May the long road keep you safe.
Below it,
a rock opens its hand.
All five fingers spread,
it turns quietly toward the sea.
This hand does not wave.
It is not a hand sending off the one who leaves,
but a hand waiting for the one who will return.
One day,
when they come back from the far sea,
it will be the first to hold them tight.
The tree waves toward departure,
the rock stays open toward return.
One sends off,
one waits.
That is the heart of living by the sea.
Knowing they are leaving, it sends them off;
not knowing if they will return, it waits.
Even as the sun sinks
and the sea grows dark,
the arm does not stop waving,
and the open hand does not close.
A single empty house
remains between them
and looks at the sea again today.
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.