In the heart of February 2007, I stepped into the frozen embrace of Gwangju, South Korea, for a 90-day artist residency at Uijei Studio. Winter had cloaked the world in silence and snow. The trees bowed under heavy white mantles, and the Korean peninsula breathed its sharp, crystalline cold.
I arrived first — a lone traveler from distant Bangladesh — only to find the residency still asleep. For four long days, I wandered in isolation. With nothing but broken English and my mother tongue, I took shelter in a modest motel where no meals were served. Language became an invisible wall. Three times a day, I survived on instant ramen, my body growing weaker beneath the weight of jet lag, freezing winds, and unspoken hunger.
Then the mountain called.
They led me to a small studio nestled on the slopes of Mudung Mountain. Every morning I climbed for forty-five minutes along a winding, snow-dusted path through stone and wild forest. At dusk the path fell quiet; no buses ventured there after sunset. I was left alone with the mountain — its ancient rocks, sleeping trees, and endless sea of snow.
It was in this harsh, breathtaking solitude that everything changed.
Surrounded by the wild spirit of Mudung Mountain and the unforgiving beauty of a Korean winter, I met myself for the first time. The silence taught me to listen. The cold sharpened my senses. The snow-covered wilderness became both mirror and canvas.
From the depths of that lonely mountain studio, my decade-long journey in drawing, painting, and performance was born — a living dialogue with nature, memory, and the raw poetry of existence. What began as struggle blossomed into profound awakening.
Uijei Residency, Mudung Mountain, 2007 — not merely a program, but the place where my artistic soul first truly awakened.