Silk bundles I

 Artist Statement

Silk Bundles

Sumita Kim

 

As I go about my everyday life, my interactions with my children and with my
mother-in-law propel me to contemplate what it is that connects one generation
to the next, and what it is that is passed down through those connections:
experience and struggle, love and attachment, pain and triumph, and most of all,
wholehearted perseverance.

I am especially interested in the female line of that transmission. I hope that the
courage and the spirit of the pioneer Korean American women immigrants are
coursing through my veins and are also pulsating within my daughter. I admire
the unquestioning willingness of those women to transcend life's tragedies and to
elevate their own awareness. Through their sacrifices, they transmit the essence
of their undying hope and fervent wishes to their children. 

 

In recent months, it has been sad for me to watch my mother-in-law on her sick bed, weakening day by day. Some evenings when I sit or lie beside her, at times it seems that I could superimpose my face on hers. At those times, how acute the realization is of the inexorable cyclical nature of life.