Lee Ji Sun’s art life of research, ‘About the Name’ 이름에 관하여

Images by Lee Ji Sun 

Once the existence of a new born is put in light, people invent or find a word to call the baby. Even during the baby is still in the mother’s womb, we make him/her a nickname, waiting for the moment of the first meeting. Since the baby comes out of the mother’s body and is born into the world, a name is given to follow during the whole life time. A name is composed of a family name, succeeded by blood from parents of parents, and of a first name, a proper one containing parents’ wishes or promises to the baby.

In Occidental regions, many people have a name coming after the Saints of the past, which reminds a specific character or a mythological image. On the other hand, in Korea, parents often name their babies with carefully chosen syllables with a specific meaning, often borrowed from Chinese characters. According to various motivations, certain fathers give the same name to the baby boy for the pride of the family, others let themselves be called with different names for professional, linguistic or religious reasons.

Like the protagonist of the novel, tired of calling the chair a chair and the table a table, who invented his own language system, the name given to each person, object, emotion, etc. is not only a linguistic code for communication, but a component of the object itself. For someone who has lost past memories, the name can be the clue to find his/her existence back and to fill out scattered blacks, in spite of the strangeness of the body that awaken mind is staring. Having no name means having no memory which points out the present, lacking his/her own past, story and history.

The number multiplying in parallel, new thing carries a new name, generated with its birth, invention, or creation. It sometimes allows to visualize and share invisible things like emotions and impressions, sometimes reduces their complex features in simply cut shapes. A common name for an object is pronounced and written in several ways according to different languages, and is specified or mixed with variable adjectives to tell its function, role or nature.

So many unknown things pass by us without telling how they are called. Besides, for unfamiliar things we’ve just met or learned, we match their faces with their names to remember. The title, that no one chose by him/herself, but is given by those who offered a great gift of life, becomes a solid aspect constituting the identity. Called and calling, our life resembles it more and more. Though a number of life elements fade out with the death, the name remains and contains its memories. Recalled somewhere after the body disappeared, it makes a storm in a cup of water and lights on the dark chamber of forgetting.

 

 

Contributor, Lee Ji Sun

Lee Ji Sun is a young Korean artist, who does activity in Paris, France. CultureM Magazine releases her art works images by drawing, writing, video, photograph in every month. http://artleejisun.com/

이지선은 프랑스 파리를 중심으로 유럽에서 활동하는 젊은 한국여성작가이다. 회화, 비디오, 사진, 글 등의 다양한 매체로 작품활동을 하고 있는 그녀의 이야기를 컬쳐엠이 소개한다. http://artleejisun.com/