Empty River of the Mountain

Sep 10

Written By Ok-ja Kwon

Mountain with no river. The tether — severed where Metal meets silence.

Birds carry shells across the ridge; each fracture catches fire. 丙 rises.

What glistens was always inside the break — not the old water,

but light where water should have been.

Ok-ja Kwon

Ok-ja 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

Empty River of the Mountain

Mountain with no river. The tether — severed where Metal meets silence.

Birds carry shells across the ridge; each fracture catches fire. 丙 rises.

What glistens was always inside the break — not the old water,

but light where water should have been.

Liturgy of the Nacre