My paintings explore questions of identity and belonging through balance, negotiating symmetry and visibility. Before turning to art in the United States, I worked in accounting academia in South Korea, where I studied how systems reduce information asymmetry and moral hazard in capital society. That background continues to inform my artistic practice. I use asymmetrical balance and paradoxical spatial arrangements to examine the ambivalence of living between cultures.

The title of this exhibition, Neither Flying nor Crying is adapted from an ancient idiom, bul-bi-bul-myeong (불비불명, 不飛不鳴), which describes a bird that neither flies nor sings for three years, waiting for the right moment to rise. This idea mirrors my own journey as a Korean immigrant woman artist who transitioned from the world of numbers to the world of color in my thirties.

Drawing from lived experience as a “Xennial” moving across cultural contexts, I have developed a visual language of the “in-between.” I play with the interplay of symmetry and asymmetry, the tension between opening and closure, the smooth transition of digital-feel gradations, and the physical texture of molded surfaces.

Subtle references to minhwa (Korean folk painting) frequently appear throughout the work, particularly in the simplified, arched form of the tiger. These animal patterns function as both structural grounding and a narrative presence. Carrying rhythm, repetition, and persistence, they do not resolve the questions of belonging but hold it open—maintaining difference without collapsing complexity. Fragmentation becomes a way to address visibility and endurance. Parts of the tiger remain partially seen, suggesting cycles of revealing and concealing.

In these paintings, balance is not a state of rest, but an ongoing process of resistance and recalibration. Tension, contradiction, and care remain active. Rather than seeking resolution, the works stay upright through sustained balance—neither flying nor crying.