황해를 떠다니는 말

I grew up moving between China and Korea. Conditions that define me — such as nationality, language, and even my birthday — have always made my identity unstable. This experience, which cannot be reduced to a single answer, has become the fundamental question that drives my work. I explore the uncertainty and fractures arising from a borderland identity, and attempt to extend them to a social dimension. Instead of concealing or mending my instability, I reveal and record it, seeking new relationships and meanings through the process.

오예지 Yeji Oh 吴礼智
xhdpwl@naver.com

〈황해를 떠다니는 말 黄马 황마〉 Words Floating on the Yellow Sea, 웹사이트, 2021

Website

I communicate with my grandparents in China through the Chinese messaging app, WeChat. However, being unable to read Chinese, I experience the errors and gaps produced by digital translators, realizing that there is no fully shared language even with my closest family members. In this work, I arrange sentences on a website that have been repeatedly processed through translation tools, becoming increasingly distorted and alienated from their original meaning. The experience of confronting these untranslatable languages questions how my words are understood by others, while simultaneously revealing new possibilities within the inherent incompleteness of communication.