In Korea, there is a quiet expectation that every child will study diligently, attend hagwons, earn top marks, and secure a place at a prestigious university. But I gravitated toward a different story, one that unfolded through paint, clay, and the flicker of ideas shared between artists. I belong to the community of creators, a collective of young people who, like me, have rebelled—if only quietly—against the rigid structures of Korean academic life.
We consider ourselves a group that started as a student-run art collective but became something more: a space where we could breathe. In this community, art is the language we speak, and through it, we explore the complex, often contradictory layers of identity, culture, and resistance. We meet in borrowed rooms, sometimes around kitchen tables crowded with sketches and supplies, sometimes in gallery spaces we’ve fought to secure. The function of art isn’t to hang beautifully in posh, air-conditioned spaces. Art asks questions, pushes boundaries, and finds ways to express the things that can’t easily be said.
My place in this community is both as a creator and a keeper of stories. But more than that, this is where I learned myself, piece by piece. In the act of making, I began to unmake the limits pressed upon me—those tight, familiar rules that told me what I could be. Here, I found room to let my hands speak, to be both artist and student, both Korean and something spilling beyond the borders of what they tell you is possible. Comfortable though it may be, we should never allow ourselves to be subsumed within the frame of someone else’s expectations or needs. We should claim our own space and respect the right of others to do so as well.
As I walk out into the winter dawn, the light breaks slowly over the distant houses, the staggered roofs that allow morning sensation to take shape. Under each roof, those beams that support the heavens for children that lie in bed, I imagine their dreams, still unbothered by the light beyond. They dream of being an artist in their own right. They want to create something. Some are afraid, afraid in their sleep, afraid awakened. As they do not know that joy of creation, the vastness onto which they can throw their colors. That chaos can jumpstart freedom is what allows us to be ourselves. Even at this early stage in our lives.
