Last summer I was invited to Bangkok for 8 days to conduct a research trip. I flew to Bangkok without a precise idea of what I would do. I visited some temples and markets and tasted delicious foods, like any tourist. Suddenly, I was drawn to a group walking in line, all dressed in orange. When they appeared in the street, people swerved to alow them to pass by first. That gesture looked to me like a quick, natural or habitual reaction. The orange group were Buddhists. This was my first visit to a Buddhist country. Where were they going? What were they doing? I wanted to follow them. I began to feel interested in their life.
The idea for my Names project came from the Bart. I understood Bart to be a container in which to put food. For me, it did not have a religious symbolism. But then I became conscious of what the Bart is to a monk. So, I began to think of the comparison between the life of a monk and the life of an ordinary person (like me). Monks live without material or sentimental possessions, while on the contrary, ordinary people require these things in their lives. I wanted to find an object, something valued a much as food, to put into the Bart. For me, that was the name.
Food makes the body of a person, but the name is a remainder of their existence. Every person has a name that they are given at birth. We cannot live alone. We need other people (other names) to live. This is a delicate condition of human life that makes us happy or unhappy without end. If you try to remember somebody, their name immediately arouses a feeling. The name is a sentiment. We live under the sentiment. How many people suffer from hatred and also from love! Suffering comes from not seeing the loved ones, or from seeing the hated ones. Accoding to the thought of buddhists our feelings Love/Hate are in fact from the same root. Buddhists try to detach from them, to be free. I don’t intend to define what is meant about freedom through my work. I want only to raise questions about our ability to attach sentiment through the writing of names: what is love? What is hatred? And what is life?
Sometimes it is necessary to free things from our mind in order to create peace inside of ourselves.
Usually visiting cards are used to present oneself to others. They have a social function. My visiting card is used for a visit in memory only, for presenting one's own life to oneself.
2005, myung-ok HAN