∞

   After my miscarriage, I realized that the circled heads on the ultrasound picture I received during my pregnancy were similar to the shapes I had been painting on the canvas since I was unaware of the fetus' existence. In my personal act of trying to return the brief form of motherhood to an infinite symbol, I recall the hearts of the parents of the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster, whose children were submerged in the blue sea and whose hearts were also submerged beneath the pitch-black waters. As they called their children "children who became stars," I titled this work "Children of the Stars." The trauma of the body and experience. The trauma of the body and experience imprints an infinity symbol on the unconscious. Here, the infinity symbol is not fixed or stationary in its state, but is constantly moving inside and outside, enveloping, fusing, and circulating. The infinite symbol is imprinted on the canvas by the body, but not by the conscious mind. The painted symbol is the desire for life that originates from the body's first reactions and the workings of the unconscious. The infinite symbol, elongated by the unconscious, extends numerous branches from the canvas and attempts to make contact with the outside world. With these branches, the infinity symbol becomes a receptor of the outside into the inside and a conduit of the inside into the outside. No part of the work is isolated, but open to the outside and inside, moving and changing together. The world of symbols, where the traditional distinction between outside and inside does not apply, is a dwelling place for life and a refuge for the wounded. The infinity symbol, delicately constructed to represent the event of death and the origin of new birth, the sublimation of suffering and empathy with the other, does not induce oblivion from existential pain, but cultivates high emotional values, such as the "working through" of psychoanalysis and the "acceptance" of meditation. The researcher's depiction of infinity goes beyond the dictionary meaning of infinity to include a handful of grassroots beliefs that allow survivors to live with peace of mind: a belief in "eternity," or a hope for the future. This is not about the former governing the latter in the mind-body dichotomy; rather, it emphasizes survival, the experience of the desire to live, the experience of being. It relates to the essential phenomenon of life and the desire for life.