Inventory of Water

Mar 3

Written By Okja Kwon

mother,

two minutes. black ink on hanji— the brush does not explain.

ducks enter the grey water. they count what the hand cannot hold: shellfish, prayer, the difference.

skylight. a frame for looking upward.

the forest could be seoul. could be sài gòn. any country where we have learned to keep the dead.

clouds gather. i eat beneath their attention.

kimchi breathes its slow argument with time. rice. salt. steam rising.

the ducks descend thirty seconds forty past where breath permits.

i know this burning.

the eye of the window opens. what watches me eat my inheritance?

moisture returns to moisture. every woman who stirred this pot left something in the water.

in the painting my face does not vanish— it agrees to become

the space between what lives and what the tide carries.

mother,

when i surface: both the one who dives and the counting.

Okja Kwon

Okja Kwon (b. 1981) is a Korean-born, transracial adoptee artist

who communicates through intimate illustrative image-making.

In response to one's survivalist attempts to transcend an identity historically rooted in imperialism, global capitalism, and desirability, Kwon draws upon metaphors that take ritualistic form. The enactment of "witnessing" provides a compilation of whispered ideations and fragmented (re)imagined remembrances of in-betweenness, all in an attempt to build an intuitive and otherworldly bridge to transcend blurred relations.

https://www.okjakwon.studio

Inventory of Water

mother,

two minutes. black ink on hanji— the brush does not explain.

ducks enter the grey water. they count what the hand cannot hold: shellfish, prayer, the difference.

skylight. a frame for looking upward.

the forest could be seoul. could be sài gòn. any country where we have learned to keep the dead.

clouds gather. i eat beneath their attention.

kimchi breathes its slow argument with time. rice. salt. steam rising.

the ducks descend thirty seconds forty past where breath permits.

i know this burning.

the eye of the window opens. what watches me eat my inheritance?

moisture returns to moisture. every woman who stirred this pot left something in the water.

in the painting my face does not vanish— it agrees to become

the space between what lives and what the tide carries.

mother,

when i surface: both the one who dives and the counting.

Telophase