UIJAE Art Studio International Residency -2007

During my artist residency experience in Mudungsun Mountain, Gungju city, South Korea, I had the opportunity to explore the connection between prayer, mountain climbing, and happiness. After a harsh winter, I was struck by the beauty of the new leaves and colorful wildflowers that had emerged and felt extremely happy after each visit. However, this also led me to question why I and many others enjoy climbing mountains. I observed that people of all ages visit mountains in their free time and that many Buddhist temples are situated on mountaintops.

Drawing from my own experiences with Muslim prayer systems and scientific meditation in university, I researched various established methods of meditation, the process of sexual orgasm, eastern and western classical music, traditional Korean music, and other phenomena of life that can make us happy. I found similarities in the physical and mental processes that lead to happiness and wondered if the physical act of performing an action is important to make us happy, how our mind gets involved with the process, and whether it needs to be distant from the body to feel happiness.

I visited the mountain and temple every day and was surprised by how the nature and process of climbing combined with me, leading me to experience some unusual moments that are not possible on plain land. I asked some artist friends to help me develop my project, and together we explored the effects of mountain climbing on the mind and body. Through our visits, we observed that the physical tiredness of climbing made a distance between the body and mind, while the expanding horizon line had an effect on our mind to open it up.

As we climbed the mountain with our friends, we found that our relationships changed after each visit and that we gained a deeper understanding of ourselves and our relationships. We wondered if the physical act of climbing and the consciousness of stepping helped fulfill the process of happiness. This exploration culminated in a prayer performance on Mudungsun Mountain, which we documented and presented in a gallery space to share our conceptual process with others.

Overall, my experience climbing Mudungsun Mountain led me to question the link between prayer and mountains, explore the mechanisms of climbing mountains, and question what makes us happy. Through this exploration, I gained a deeper understanding of the connections between physical and spiritual happiness, and the transformative experience that can result from the act of climbing a mountain.

During my three-month residency at Mudung Mountain Studio, I embarked on a new artistic project titled \”Searching for the missed mystery of Life and Happiness\”. The project aims to visually explore the relationship between nature, spirituality, and happiness, and understand the mechanisms that encourage people to be drawn to supernatural beings and phenomena.

To accomplish this, I plan to use a variety of creative visual practices, including live performance, video, photography, drawing, music, and painting with simplified installations. My focus will be on my thoughts and inner feelings about interpersonal and socio-life, as well as the crossroads of artistic practice, personal expression, experimentation, and risk points.

The project\’s catalyst note is a passage by Khalil Gibran about prayer, which has guided my exploration of the connection between prayer, nature, and happiness. My goal is to create a conceptual world that will serve a new epoch and to present my work in a way that is easy and communicative to non-artist audiences.

Through this project, I hope to provoke reflection and exchanges around the process of creation, form a notion of sculpture as a live presence, and occupy space for a fragment of time. It will be an immersive experience that takes the audience on a journey through the unknown, encouraging them to approach sculpture through installation and performance, feel sensations, and listen to movement.

Ultimately, the primary objective of this project is to uncover the mysteries of life and happiness and present them through the visual arts.