Jung Yun Doh
Every Material has Meaning : japsang
Prompt: My aim for this bridge project was to look into everyday household materials and objects and use that to create new artwork. In order to create an artwork that represents me, it needed to be related to by historical, cultural and social background. In order to fulfil these goals, I looked around the house to choose a material and noticed that there was especially a lot of plastic. This was due to the spread of the pandemic within our society since we are not able to go out to restaurants and cafes to enjoy food, I ordered a lot of delivery food. These days, food delivery in Korea is extremely developed, as well as food packaging. Hence, even when I order food for a single meal, there is a minimum of 5-6 containers being delivered to my house. I realized that these plastic containers are being wasted after only being used once, which is a huge negative impact on the environment. Therefore, I decided that I could reuse these containers and bottles to convey to the audience the problems of global warming and recycling.
The sculpture is presented with plastic on the surface which is then covered with newspaper patterns and patterns that represent fire, in order to convey the message related to global warming. The colour scheme is vivid, inspired by Korean traditional buildings and sculptures, ‘japsang’. I found the funky and irregular shape of the sculpture interesting and wanted to create a sculpture containing these features. The surface of the sculpture is made out of hard plastic since I wanted to transfer the message that it can not be penetrated. The meaning and purpose of these sculptures and noticed that they were placed on the roof in order to prevent fires and bad spirits from entering the building. Which links back to the message that I am trying to convey related to global warming. Since these actual sculptures are placed to prevent fire, my sculpture could be used as a symbol to prevent the global temperature from increasing.
Furthermore, I used newspapers to cover up some sections of the sculpture to give it a specific pattern and colour. Since I have not seen newspapers around our community for a long time and felt nostalgic about my childhood. Since when I was in primary school, I used to bring the morning newspaper to my dad, but nobody reads the newspaper anymore but reads the news through their phones.
Therefore, I created a sculpture by reusing plastic containers and bottles to convey to the audience the problems of global warming and the importance of recycling.
