Mothers II, 2025, acrylic on canvas 160 x 200cm
Mothers. We all have one. I have two.
In this painting, both are present: my adoptive mother and my biological mother, held within its layers. One known, one imagined; one present, one absent. The painting exists in that space between.
The decision to become a mother, or not, has always been complex, a question many women of a certain age are expected to carry. Motherhood is neither inevitable nor possible, nor right, for everyone.
This work honours motherhood in all its tenderness and difficulty, its joy and its cost. At the same time, it holds the weight of an unresolved question shaped by the world we live in now: what does it mean to choose motherhood today? And what does it mean to choose otherwise?
My paintings explore motherhood as both fulfilment and loss, and childlessness as both freedom and longing.
Inspired by Pojagi, a Korean textile tradition that conceals seams, I make stitching visible. I treat the surface like skin: layered and repaired, carrying memory. Painted on stitched canvas with visible seams, incorporating diary fragments from my adoptive mother’s diaries and the word mother written in Hangul/Korean before being abstracted.