We Them Girls, tm•galleria

“How does one write about oneself?”
asked a young man to the novelist Haruki Murakami.
“Write about fried oysters,” he answered.

It is impossible to write about oneself. In Murakami’s opinion, it is also a quite useless attempt. What one can do instead is to write about fried oysters. By doing so, your stance towards the fried oyster is naturally expressed. Writing about fried oysters is writing about yourself.

What about drawing yourself? Is this also a useless attempt?

I make self-portraits. And making a self-portrait is similar to building a circular train track, a continuous loop between the artist-self and the artist as subject. The boundaries are merged, the roles are turned, and I create an enclosed universe as I don’t need any more than myself. But what happens when I don’t want to be myself, and all I can have is myself?

I have wondered, probably my entire life, what it is like to NOT be me. As I observe the body that I am drawing, while living the body that is doing the drawing, I form a stance towards myself as I might form a stance towards fried oysters.

And the stance: some might call it (self) love, but I call it destiny.

The exhibition We Them Girls consists of coloured pencil drawings all made while looking into a small mirror in my left hand. However, I can’t say I drew what I saw.

— Minjee Hwang Kim

Image credit: Noora Lehtovuori