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Tree Family, Our Story (2024)
Hokma Gim
A tree talks to me and sways in the wind as though it is dancing in love. Watching the tree dance fills me with awe at how long it has lived in just one spot, and prompts me to reflect on my own life. The events of my 20s threw me into a cave whose darkness I could only find my way out of through the consolations of interacting with nature.
Watching the trees dance reminds me of germination and beginnings in general. I think about the beginnings of my own identity and find myself drawn to the concept of family. Our families are the first communities we are born into, and many of our most formative experiences happen with our families. Regardless of their varied forms, they are crucial to the process of building character and disposition.
My series, painted on paper, depicts various concepts of family in the form of trees, starting with my own family before expanding to others. Whether they share resemblances or have completely different shapes, whether they are planted close to or distant from each other, all of these arrangements of trees are at the same time family stories.
I plan to make my initial foray into the series with a very strict esquisse plan carried out on cotton paper sized 45.5 x 61cm. This will allow me to experiment with the subtle differences in materiality, speed, and texture of every color involved in the work. I will adapt any successful ideas from this stage to the larger 150 x 210 cm frames.
While my past depictions of trees focused on the movement of their branches and leaves, the Tree Family series will depict trees in terms of their roots in the ground, just as families' identities are rooted in their strong foundations. The ability of a tree to hold itself in place against the passage of time is another one of their inspiring characteristics that many families exhibit, and it is something I hope to capture in my work.
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