Kim Hyun Jung x Rio Olympics

Sehando (Winter Scene) holds a loneliness so sad it chills the bone.

Look closely at my Naesoong series, and its skirts, too, are brimming with loneliness.

That is how I came to be drawn to the painting Sehando. If his was the loneliness of exile, of the moment

when everyone had left him,

the loneliness of Naesoong is the kind we feel within society.

People smile at one another face to face, yet other expressions lie behind, and loneliness is felt within them.

It was this common ground that drew me to Sehando.

And that is why I wanted to clothe Sehando in warmth.

So that it would no longer be lonely, no longer desolate, I filled it with the Naesoong girls who appear in my work.

In that lonely space they meet, exercise shoulder to shoulder,

and I imagine them running and playing together, as we once did on the playground as children.