My 'LIFE' is expanding. I sense that I am much different from who I was myself a year ago. The boundaries of my once-familiar world are blurring and blending, allowing me to explore and use a wider spectrum of colors. The dichotomy between the ideology of black and white has been dissolved, and the idea of chroma has also. Sometimes I wish to see things more vividly, but at other times I choose to leave them opaque as they are. Time moves forward in its continuous flow, in durée, and I witness innumerable varieties of life intersecting one another on the streets and throughout the city. Standing amidst it all, I construct my world once again.
My 'LIFE' is tolérance. A world of generosity that embraces the lives of all. I confess that I could not depict the city with my limited perspective when I first started my project on New York. But perhaps the generosity that has sustained this city has been patiently waiting for me. I continue to learn that individuals and cities cannot easily be defined by the various layers and boundaries that exist, such as skin color, nationality, gender, or origin. Only when I vaguely started to understand, that it is life, did my studio begin to fill up with the life of New York, the city of immigrants.
An artist who draws life, Choi Hyeji does work that captures the energy of life in the most ordinary scenes. Cement— the main material for recording such an epoch-making life—has a cold property, but its hard and firm characteristic is suitable for demonstrating the potential power and vitality capable of supporting the life of all. The materials recorded and collected personally by the artist transform at times into visual works and at other times into literature. Lately, she’s become hooked on doing work that goes beyond boundaries by expressing vitality through colors.