Kathryn Choi, 2024
Artists Statement: My art is between the fear and courage I learned from. As a child, I feared night, and every night was a pressure going to sleep. I felt like I was left behind in a lonely, waking world. This sense of desperation and wanting to sleep heightened the significance of dreams for me.
In dreams, people can become anything, as dreams reflect the depths of our unconsciousness. To me, a dream serves as a realm where I am free from the consequences of my actions. One particularly memorable dream involved flying through the sky. I felt total freedom for the first time and saw the world differently from above. When I woke up, I started to analyze what happened in my dream and how I felt during the moments.
There are many repeating elements in my art, such as the use of blue and yellow. Blue is a major color that I see when I dream. To include the dream's mood that I see every night, I picked blue as a theme in the dream world. Blue in a color theory also represents relaxation and imagination, which I thought would go well with the theme of dreams. On the other hand, I came up with yellow as a caution. I incorporated myself, who is confused about what to do in reality.
As a child who suffered going to sleep, dreams felt like a mysterious presence. Dreams sometimes solved problems that were difficult to solve in reality, and at times, my hopes approached in dreams as if they were real. Until I fell asleep, I was filled with fear, but the moment I entered the world of dreams, I gained hope and courage. The goal of my art is to portray the journey where dreams become a beacon of courage, inspiring individuals to navigate the complexities of reality with newfound strength.