House Tour

 

Three years have passed since the outbreak of the global pandemic, during which people around the world experienced an unprecedented form of isolation. As homes became the center of everyday life, families who had once been too busy to spend time together found themselves sharing the same space through remote work, online schooling, home cafés, and countless other activities prefixed with the word "home." Spending extended periods indoors led many people to express their identities through the spaces they inhabited, and interior design shifted beyond conventional notions of comfort and warmth toward increasingly personal and distinctive forms of expression.

 

For us, a home is far more than a place to live. It is a space nourished by the lives, relationships, stories, and emotions of those who inhabit it. Just as John Howard Payne's song Home, Sweet Home refers not merely to a warm and spacious house but to the presence of loved ones, my idea of home embodies my roots, memories of childhood, and the complex emotions formed through family relationships. Home exists in countless forms, each shaped by personal experience.

 

House Tour unfolds through two interconnected series: one interprets the homes of others through interviews, while the other presents paper-house templates that can be cut out and assembled into miniature houses.

 

In these works, I portray the diverse realities of contemporary families through fragmented, delicate architectural structures, the absence of human figures, and lush overgrown plants. Each house is based on real stories gathered through interviews. Following a brief questionnaire, participants are invited to recall memories of their homes and families in whatever way feels natural—sometimes by revisiting the houses they once lived in, sharing photographs, or reading passages from old diaries.

 

Drawing upon these narratives, I compose interiors filled with monochromatic furniture and dense vegetation within partially dismantled houses. The contrast between abandoned household objects, unable to take root, and plants that have firmly established themselves raises a quiet question: Who truly belongs to this home? Where do we, as human beings, actually take root?

 

As deeply personal family stories—often too difficult to share openly—are translated into visual metaphors and presented to viewers, the works invite reflection on the meaning of family and offer an alternative perspective on the relationships that shape our lives.

 

The My Home Project series offers a contrasting approach. Rather than examining the homes and families of others, these works encourage viewers to imagine their own ideal home with a sense of lightness and play. Each painting functions like a paper model: when cut out and assembled, it becomes a miniature house into which furniture, personal objects, and companion animals can be arranged.

 

Borrowing from the childhood experience of carefully cutting and assembling paper toys, this series proposes that the idea of home can remain flexible, imaginative, and open to transformation. At the same time, it gently questions the contemporary perception of home ownership, which has increasingly come to signify wealth and property rather than shelter and emotional security. Through this playful process, I invite viewers to reflect upon what their ideal home—and perhaps their ideal family—might truly look like.