이면. 사진. 84x118cm. 2014


Experience of boundaries between familiarity and unfamiliarity
The place shown in the photo is the Dead Sea. When I said that I’d been to the Dead Sea, people would ask me whether the body really floated on the sea and whether the water tasted salty, which were also what I wanted to know most.
To answer the questions, it is yes. The water is really salty and the body floats on the water if you just lie on the water. But what is more vivid in my memory is the fence that crossed the middle of the beach rather than the salty water of the Dead Sea.
The boundary, which seemed loose and negligent but crossed exactly the middle of the beach, divided between the area for tourists where all cultures were permitted and the area for local people that was filled with Islam culture.
Of course, I looked at the other area from the area for tourists. And Muslim men in the other area looked at me, an Asian woman in the bikini. (there was no woman found on the beach of the Islam area.)
At that moment, I was not a little embarrassed by an encounter with too different culture. Because I wore a bikini, and I felt as if even the bikini was stripped off by their endless glances. Although they and I, who had grown up in different cultural areas, existed in the same space and time, it may be said that their viewpoints and thoughts and mine were totally different at the moment. (Of course, there might be something same shared between them and me.) What might be true and right among the dissimilarities? And what is the emotion that arises at the boundaries between the familiarity and the unfamiliarity?
I wanted to leave the subtle encounter of the two cultures and genders behind, and captured (selected) the moment using the tool of a camera.Thus, I was able to leave the expressions of them who looked at me at that time and
my viewpoints towards them. And further, I sprinkled the developed film with nail polish (I wanted to use a tool capable of symbolizing feminity) in order to express my own feelings of that time.
As a result, the finally developed photo shows both their objective glances and my abstract emotions felt at that time.