Artwork text
In place of the fisher taken by the typhoon, the empty boat returned alone.
The boat said nothing. The crow cried in its place.
Across the cold sea, one black cry stretched far.
Between dream and fear, between life and death, there was Ieodo.
The waves wordlessly stroked the grief of those who remained.
The empty boat remembered. Those who could not return.
Ieodo, too, remembered. The names that were never called in the end.
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.