Ugly Beauty (美워)

• Ugly Beauty (美워)
• Cho Mihee
  1997.07-10~20
• Munwha Ilbo Gallery, Seoul
• Sponsored by Kaema Art Planning, CHJ International Ltd, Seom Café

美워 – I started to think about beauty at an early age. I understood about the meaning of my adoptive Korean name. The Chinese character of “Mi” (the first part of my given name) is Beauty. The second part is girl. The global meaning is “Beautiful girl” It was hard to accept this name when you are so far from that. Irony.

I was ashamed to say the meaning of my name to Westerners. Fantasy and exoticism kept working together in my mind. When I came here, in Korea, I was more interested in calligraphy and wanted to play with the arabesque and rhythms of the Chinese characters in Sino-Korean. As I continue to draw ‘Mi’ repeatedly, I realized that that character could look more and more like “Kalbi” (bones) – not that pretty at all, an anorexic beauty. In adding ‘wo’ (in Korean-Korean language) to ‘mi’, I confront the meaning of ‘Mi’ (beauty) and challenge others to “reinterpret.”

The concept of mixing beauty and ugliness came with my knowledge of Korean. My approach to the Korean language is totally free and delirious. Not only about the meaning of words, but also of life and its value from conception. At the ‘fetus’ stage, dependency and freedom exist at the same time. Lightness and pressure from a society where they will ‘appear’ and then occupy a gender role…