Naesoong: Isn’t This the Place We Dreamed Of?

Everyone has moments when they want to set down their roles for a while and rest. A place free from others’ gazes becomes, in itself, a small refuge. Around the age of twenty, wounded by fragmentary judgments and hasty evaluations, the artist thought of Shin Saimdang on Korean currency. She wondered whether even Shin Saimdang — forever remembered as the icon of the ‘wise mother, good wife’ — might once have longed for a moment to set down every role and simply rest. Naesoong: Isn’t This the Place We Dreamed Of? began with that imagining. On reflection, people are called by their roles far more often than by their names. In the moment of stepping briefly outside those expectations to enjoy the ease of a single cup of coffee, one can return wholly to oneself. The ‘dreamed-of place’ in this work is less a particular location than a stretch of time in which one can set the heart down, free of anyone’s judgment.