[Interviews with Dreamers] Haemil, Who Sews On Paintings
By An Mi-sun
Published Nov. 28, 2012
Translated by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s
note: In the world, there are many women who are not rich, famous, or experts
in something, but who have diverse merits and touching life-stories. “Interviews with Dreamers” introduces these
women who only seem average.
Before
her first solo exhibition, gaining strength from poverty and solitude
 |
| Haemil in 1996, in front of the mural she painted in her rented room. © Haemil |
Life
gave me a disappointing reality and the seeds of hope simultaneously. Desperate
poverty and solitude in which I had no one with whom to talk about paintings
generated in me greater desire to create, and through my first exhibition, gave
me the strength to come boldly out into the world.
I met her again in her workroom
in Eunpyeong-gu. She started with the story of how, when she lived alone in her
teens, she painted on her walls with old paint. Wondering whether or not she
was a person who absolutely had to paint, she took private classes for a few
months to learn about using materials in 2000.
“Painting alone at home, I realized that I could
communicate myself to the world through paintings, that the only reason I
wasn’t an artist was that I couldn’t afford to just paint, and that I had a lot
of potential to become an artist.”
She has always worked for a
living. She wanted to study, but there wasn’t a place to study art at night. She
wanted to know as much about paintings as everyone else did, so she finally
found a night school. She had the desperation of having been doing for a long
time work that she hated and that wasn’t right for her in order to earn money,
so that not properly trying to fulfill the dream that she passionately wanted
was not an option.
She started attending an art college
and studied fine arts. Her fellow students were a mix of teenage freshman and
more experienced artists. Haemil worked in sales, so getting to classes on time
was not easy. Though she had become a manager (and had the resulting salary)
after working for a long time, she had to quit that position and go back to
doing the same work as a new employee in order to attend school.
“Right before and during when I was going to
school, my paintings had a certain style.
My life was too hard, too lonely, too
some-other-word-for-‘sad’-and-‘hurting.’ Without realizing it, there were too
many things I was bitter about inside. I expressed this inner bitterness though
art… at that time—it’s
called ‘impasto’ technique—I painted a lot of pictures by just really all at once, like
I was gushing paint, by using paint so quickly and urgently that even I was
surprised.”
Feeling
like the ant carrying too big a burden
Even for young artists who have
graduated from an art school it is hard to make a name for oneself and succeed
as an artist. Haemil’s work was shown as a special selection at the 2008 Korean
Women’s Grand Art Exhibition, and was shown at the 2010 Korean Grand Art
Exhibition. She was a talented young artist who took part in the “New Ideas of
Time and Space” exhibition in Seoul, an exhibit of outstanding contemporary
artists at the Jirin Provincial Museum in China, and in the International
Exchange Harmony Exhibition. However, she felt that continuing to work within
the system of Korea’s art world would be too difficult and that the barrier to
recognition was too high. In the end, she decided to hold her first solo
exhibition.
“I was feeling so small, and having always
struggled like this to survive, I wondered if I would die like this, if it
would end like this. I wanted to show my work to the world once. When I took it
all out and looked at it, it hurt. While I was wondering how to organize the
pieces for the exhibition, I started wanting to treat and operate on my inner
pain, and so I threaded a needle with fishing line and sewed on a painting.”
In the process of preparing for
her solo exhibition, she had discovered an important motif for expressing
herself.
“I went to my sister’s house
and was looking at a picture that her child had drawn, and it was an ant
clutching an apple-like red lump. ‘That ant is like me—like me, it’s carrying too big a burden,’ I
thought. Ants get crushed by apples. I went home and started to think about
what message I should convey by putting ants in my work.”
“When I was young, I never had any toys. I
dropped out of junior high school, and I’ve never studied with a reference book
that was new. I mean that I got used ones somewhere, and now that I think about
it, I picked up and ate what other kids had dropped while eating. In any case,
I’ve gotten by until now by escaping danger and am still alive. The message the
ant gave was a big one.”
“It’s a big world, and the starting line is
different for different people. I lived invisible to others, in such a small
and insignificant way… I have lived that way, and because of that I can see other
people who live like that. Those people who have such a hard time, how will
they end up? It’s always a sad ending.”
Countless
stories within relationships are what life is made of
 |
| A detail from a work entitled Restraints. She threaded a needle with fishing line and sewed stich-by-stich onto the canvas. © Haemil |
“Now I’ve become much happier while continually
drawing ants. In the middle of their disorder, order appears and they make
certain shapes. I’ve realized that even people who get by with such difficulty,
when you look at their lives all together, they have a certain meaning. I’ve
started to think about some lives’ ends, and the meaning the ants have for me
has changed.”
The ant she discovered renewed
her will to work. Until then, she had painted as she had felt like painting,
but now she regulated her breathing and controlled herself while she was
working. In her studio there was a large canvas that had been painted black
with acrylic paint. After painting it five times, so carefully that not a hair
of the paint brush came out, she let it dry―and then repeated this process seven more
times.
About taking such pains, she
said, “It was for painting the ants. I dutifully did the background work in
order to show their fragile existence.”
The stitching and the ants
would go on top of that. She threaded the clear fishing line into the needle
and sewed it into the canvas stitch by stich―and to do so, she had to saw off the wooden
frame and then reattach it. She said that working with the fishing line was in
order to connect her fractured self and reanalyze relationships through tying
together the line pieces.
“An ant is everyone’s start, their birth. Just as
when people are born they make a dot, as they live, they meet countless other
dots. The first people I saw after birth were my grandmother and father, and
then other relationships followed―other family, society, several relationships. I
think that the many stories within these relationships are what make up our
lives.”
If
my paintings give comfort to those in pain…
These days, she works all day
at her office and all night at her studio. She sleeps huddled up in the cold
studio and goes straight to work in the morning. I asked her if she was lonely,
and she said that loneliness was essential, and smiled. She is preparing for an exhibition in
December.
“It seems like everyone has worries and hurt
inside that are hard to talk about. I hope that they can look at my work and
see the same sadness, hurt, loneliness, pain, these kinds of things that they
carry in a knot inside, and be comforted. When I’m sad and hurt and trying to
hide it, if somebody nudges me and says even a word of comfort, I burst into
tears. I hope my work is like that.”
She said there was nothing more
beautiful than the world as it is. There are pretty pictures and pictures that
give us pleasure to look at, but what she must seek are not those, but
solitude, or works that make you think or that are painful, she believes.
 |
| A detail from a work entitled <1>. © Haemil |
At the end of our meeting, she
told me about her hidden dream.
“I want to be an artist, but I can’t predict
whether or not that process will be too difficult. The work I desperately want
to do, my dream, is to paint, but the goal I want to accomplish is sharing. All
people in the world are the same ants, dots, but some of them are born with
more. If someone is living a life in which they get a little more different―a little privilege, I believe that that does not
belong to them. Sharing should be such a
natural thing, but of course generally it’s not.”
“The reason that my work tends to be dark and
painful is that I want to share difficult and painful things more than good
things. Later, if my talent gets recognized and I have some money to spare
because of my work, I want to share it, and also share that process and these
painful feelings we all have. I’m thankful for the talent I have. I hope to use
it wholly in the way that I want.”
The ants painted one by one
onto the canvas, the lines sewn stitch by stitch with great effort―I know what they are. They are warm encouragement
and praise for those living impoverished and insignificant lives, and they are
an ovation sent wholeheartedly. Belief in the magnificent order created by
these beings who are in pain and suffering. I want to give that ovation back to
her. For all of us, I want to cheer on the life and dreams she has chosen.
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