And to Flounder in This Sea Is Sweet to Me

Site-specific installation for the group show Flickering Shores, commissioned by Sea Art Festival, Busan.

Thousands of white threads traverse the length of the Old Ilgwang Church, a now-abandoned hall close to Icheon Bridge. Once a Methodist prayer centre, turned into a field hospital for the injured during the Korean War, and briefly a middle school before returning to prayer, the building has had many lives and housed many communities, people, and stories.

And to Flounder in This Sea Is Sweet to Me transforms the vacant space once again. The threads emit from a church light source and extend the length of the empty interior, passing through two windows at the far end of the building and out to the outdoor terrace. Shono responds to this site of multilayered narratives with a structure that is at once complex and delicate, tangible and light. Throughout the day it shifts with the natural light, tracing the passage from brightness to soft dark.

Playing with light as a metaphor for vision, the work is a call to journey, travel, introspection, dream, and wonder. The horizontal white threads, characteristic of Shono's work, multiply like hand-drawn lines from a single point, reaching out to almost hug the windows. One can step into the form, which purposefully orients the gaze outward, through the windows and toward the sea. The threads, thin strands of perception, expand the artwork's dimensions from the physical to the experiential, inviting us to imagine.