Each of the seams is the flow of time and often becomes a road to my childhood. My mother’s needlework factory played an important role. Threads, cloths, and cottons around were good toys of mine along with the sounds of sewing machines. The sewing machine, at which my mother always worked during my childhood, gives a visual motif to me that stimulates a different kind of maternal love, symbolizing the flow of time. Sewing is like a mother’s touch on her child. Sewing is a repetitive action on myself that has therapeutic effects.
Something I remember about my childhood—I always drew pictures with threads whenever I was not with my mother. Sewing machine was a means for living for mother, but it was both a playground and resting place for me. The search for my identity around the sewing machine established the groundwork for my creative work. Through my work, I am reviving thirty, if not longer, years that mother spent on her sewing machine. She sewed to the point her knees were too weak to press on the pedal. This kind of passion is boldly translated into her daughter’s art work. Self-portraits make up the majority of my creative works. Sometimes, mother’s portrait appears. The reflection on mother’s sewing is the raw materials for my works, and there is a very special meaning in the process of recording different ways this is expressed.. As I sew with the sewing machine, I remember mother and soon enter into my own world. My work acts as a catalyst for my life.
My main focus of art is time. All of the titles of my work include the term “NUBIGi” and a number. The numbers just state the order of my work. NUBIGi means sewing in korean. The main focus of my art is not the drawing itself. Each thread is a symbol of time. If a thread changes in color over time, it goes to show that time still resides within it.