Language
Ryeo
Cho Serang
This space features Ryeo, a monumental ink-and-color collage created by Cho Se Rang for the 2025 Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale.
The title Ryeo is drawn from Lü (Fire over Mountain), one of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, which symbolizes “the traveler.” Like fire drifting atop a mountain, it evokes a being in motion—one that never settles, always journeying through unfamiliar terrain.
Cho Se Rang, whose practice is shaped by a migratory life between Korea and China, explores themes of water and fire, civilization and movement, tradition and experimentation.
The work is composed of numerous torn and reassembled fragments of hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper), forming a vast and layered visual field. More than a collage, it becomes a cartography of time—piecing together shards of memory and experience.
Her distinctive method of detaching and reattaching paper echoes the act of gathering stories along a wandering path, each fragment marking an encounter, a passage, a trace.
Within the image, water is rendered through the natural bleeding and absorption of ink—signifying transience and the flowing nature of reality. Fire, in contrast, marks rupture, transformation, and the pulse of civilization. These two forces—fluid and volatile—coexist in dynamic balance within a single surface.
Central to this work is temporality. Each paper piece, drawn at different moments, forms a temporal landscape where past, present, and future are entangled in coexistence.
As the artist states:
“A world seen through a mind of distinction is filled with illusion.”
Ryeo becomes an invitation to loosen fixed perspectives, and to open oneself to a world constantly shifting, always becoming.
More than a work of art, Ryeo is an autobiographical journey. The artist’s life—navigating across borders, traditions, languages, and historical thresholds—quietly inhabits the work, allowing her migratory path to unfold as visual poetics.
The title Ryeo is drawn from Lü (Fire over Mountain), one of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, which symbolizes “the traveler.” Like fire drifting atop a mountain, it evokes a being in motion—one that never settles, always journeying through unfamiliar terrain.
Cho Se Rang, whose practice is shaped by a migratory life between Korea and China, explores themes of water and fire, civilization and movement, tradition and experimentation.
The work is composed of numerous torn and reassembled fragments of hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper), forming a vast and layered visual field. More than a collage, it becomes a cartography of time—piecing together shards of memory and experience.
Her distinctive method of detaching and reattaching paper echoes the act of gathering stories along a wandering path, each fragment marking an encounter, a passage, a trace.
Within the image, water is rendered through the natural bleeding and absorption of ink—signifying transience and the flowing nature of reality. Fire, in contrast, marks rupture, transformation, and the pulse of civilization. These two forces—fluid and volatile—coexist in dynamic balance within a single surface.
Central to this work is temporality. Each paper piece, drawn at different moments, forms a temporal landscape where past, present, and future are entangled in coexistence.
As the artist states:
“A world seen through a mind of distinction is filled with illusion.”
Ryeo becomes an invitation to loosen fixed perspectives, and to open oneself to a world constantly shifting, always becoming.
More than a work of art, Ryeo is an autobiographical journey. The artist’s life—navigating across borders, traditions, languages, and historical thresholds—quietly inhabits the work, allowing her migratory path to unfold as visual poetics.