Hyunha Lim

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Hyunha always had difficulties to communicate her thoughts to other people, especially as a foreigner in London. At first,  she thought it was because of language or cultural differences, as a result of her uncommon situation of having a lot of experiences in different kinds of cultures and multicultural environment  . But she realized it was because every people are all different and has different mental processes. Hyunha was able to find this out when she had conversation with her parents and sister. They were the only people she share cultural backgrounds, because they were the only people who always moved together. She also asked her other friends who only lived in one region through their whole life, and they said the same thing, that it is hard to share one's thoughts to others accurately, even if they did not have any problems with cultural differences. This explained that the issue was not only about the cultural differences, but also because everyone is different individuals.

 

What Hyunha explores in this work is the series of ‘layers’ in the process of communication. For example, at the beginning, one has an idea (thought). This idea turn this idea into words, then goes through one's voice, facial and body language to take it out to the world, through one's voice and tone of speaking. This is how one's idea comes out to the world. Then it reaches to another person, through another series of layers such as that person’s way of understanding, knowledge, values, or past experiences. This is how it is delivered to another person’s head. Comparing the idea originally existed in one's head to the idea that came out to the world, and the context that is actually delivered to the other person’s head are completely different. The idea not only transfers but also transforms as it goes through the ‘layers’. It is why it is impossible to communicate 100 percent of what I have in my head. This happens every day and every time, but people are not conscious about it.

 

At the very beginning of making this work, Hyunha had a real apple in front of her. She observed it, and painted on a canvas. Then she took a photo of the painting, took that image and printed out on a piece of fabric. Then she took a photo of the printing and used this projector to shoot on this wall.

 

Hyunha wanted to emphasize these stages of processes, as a metaphor of the journey of an idea going through layers. Originally, it was a real apple, but it became a projection of an image of printed image of a painting of an apple. She did not only gave meaning to the showing final outcome but also the process of making the work. According to the logic she gave to the work, the image of the apple should process on and on until it is unable to see if it is from an apple. The reason why she stopped at this particular stage is because it shows how much the apple changed from its original physical apple to this digital form of image which cannot even be touched.

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