People do tend to fear and despise shamans but turn to them in times of desperation. Such a contradiction is a human characteristic, no? I'm more pulled to the human drama of shamans - their experience in society and identity struggles - than their transcendental power. Their drastic lives enable them to empathize with others and provide solace.
Hyon GyonIn my work, hair denotes the flow of life prior to being freed from pain. I fill the hair with human struggles such as deep-rooted anxieties, stubborn attachment to life, obsessions, and restrictions. Appearing fluid like a live organism, the hair symbolizes longevity and patience, but when it appears coarse, the hair expresses an energetic life force and freedom.
Hyon GyonArt-making is an extension of the kind of spiritual process that shamans unfold in order to demonstrate the connectedness of the world beyond reality.
Hyon GyonDesire and loss of will tend to hurt the mind, which can lead to fear and compulsion. The result is that we suppress negative emotions, which we've been taught to be shameful of and hide, such as pain, anger, sorrow, and resentment. I take these complex and varied emotions surrounded by obscurity, absurdity, contradiction, and events out of our control such as tragedy, and project them in my work. So I understand that the images can generate fear, confusion, and anxiety in the audience, and if they're difficult to turn away from, it only means that my intention has been communicated.
Hyon GyonBlack does not signify the darkness related to death or nothingness, but a darkness that combines everything and holds the possibility of creation, a temporary death that embraces rebirth.
Hyon GyonThe subjects in my work appear as unidentified ghosts that can't be said to be of this world. I've decided to call them incarnations. In various religions, myths, and legends, the word "incarnation" refers to the birth or emergence of transcendent beings in the form of humans or other bodies. If "incarnation" denotes the appearance of an abstract being in some concrete form, in a gut ceremony, a shaman could be considered an incarnation of our desires, hopes, and sorrows. The incarnations that appear in my work are always new and I meet them for the first time by drawing them.
Hyon Gyon