Hyeweon Park

The Spectral In-between: Hauntology in Diaspora

My interest lies in the kind of identity that forms under diasporic conditions — and in the way a past that never fully ended continues to operate inside the present. The memories and feelings I carried from Korea did not disappear after I moved. They kept returning, repeating themselves across different times and places, shaping how I perceive and experience the present. Rather than settling into a stable identity, this state remains one of coexistence — different times and emotions living alongside each other without ever fully merging.My work is an attempt to give this condition a form, through painting and installation. The diptych structure — two canvases that could connect into a single image but never quite do — is installed in a corner so that the gap between them becomes visible. That gap is not empty space. It is where different times and memories sit, unable to fully reach each other. I think of it as a state of in-between, and I use it as a structure for making the diasporic position visible.At the same time, the past in my work is not something that has disappeared — it is something that keeps moving inside the present. This connects to what Derrida describes in his writing on hauntology: an unfinished past that returns in altered form and unsettles what we take to be now. The figures in my paintings do not hold still — they emerge and dissolve within something like fire, and traces of mountains, animals, and people overlap without separating. This instability is not simply expressive. It is the condition itself: memory and feeling continuously transforming the present.In the end, my work does not offer a resolved image. It constructs a space where different times and emotions are active all at once, and asks the viewer to sit with the tension and instability that live in the gaps between them.