Chatz no. 2: Haejung Lee edition

I've been following Haejung Lee's intricately eerie illustrations for some time now. So heck! I thought I may as well have a chat to her and find out what she's all about (as opposed to stalking her for the foreseeable future).

To start with, who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?









 Those are surprisingly hard questions. 
Maybe it’s because I am over-thinking them like I always do with everything, haha. 


My name is Haejung Lee. Plain person who obsessively draws to keep memories of mine intact. I was born in South Korea currently residing in Canada. Some people call me an artist and some call me an illustrator. I don't really know what the difference is.











Oh I am a chronic over thinker and editor too... 
I love that description - is it that sometimes you feel that unless documented, all of your thoughts and ideas swim around in your head and eventually drown you? Maybe that's just me...








 It's quite the opposite with me actually. 
Say you're chewing a piece of gum. 
In the beginning, that piece of gum is the sweetest and the softest of all and it is pleasant and you chew it with joy. But through constant chewing, it starts to turn rubbery and tasteless, you end up spitting it out and you no longer have care for it.
 You could say that I'm trying to capture all that sweetness and softness of a memory, or a thought, before all the vibrancy is lost and it becomes blurry. 
I always dreaded the idea of forgetting something that was once important to me. I thought and still think there's something sad and somewhat melancholic about things that are useless to me now, that were so important to me in the past.











           

Beautifully put. Would you say you only document happy memories in that case? Or perhaps any thought/feeling/memory that has particular significance to you?


 
I think good or bad, all memories and thoughts are important, whatever emotions they may evoke within you. They, in totality, make you who you are as a person, an individual. As cliché as it sounds, clichés are cliché for a reason, I would assume..
. This might not be relatable to everyone but, I find myself more attracted to perhaps a bit more realistic, sometimes harsh, unhappy memories and thoughts, because I find more raw emotions within them than just happy memories. 
I find them important because in life, you would not truly appreciate the happy things in life if there weren't unfortunate things to compare it to.
 I usually find myself juxtaposing these often difficult, sometimes upsetting subject matter with elements of subtle quirky humor in it and I've had many people tell me that as well. 
It might be a way for me to cope with these thoughts better, I'm not sure. It all came out naturally without intention.

I agree with that thought process - I think you have the most to learn from the less pleasant things in life. I personally love the snippets of humour in your pieces for two reasons: one because it intrigues the viewer into dissecting and thinking about the piece and secondly, there is always something to have a wry smile over in a shit situation!
 To take a things a little off track, where do you see yourself at this very hour in a decade?









 It’s quite interesting that you mention the viewers' freedom to dissect the work because I personally don't like to tell the audience what each piece is EXACTLY about ever. 
I had an exhibition last year where I got to talk to a lot of people about my work. People would ask me what the pieces were about, but I would instead turn the question onto them. 
The way people interpreted the pieces were so far off from what it was about, but nevertheless it was so extremely interesting to hear their interpretations. 
I love how people make the works their own by relating to themselves. The works all may seem like self portraits, but we are all human and hopefully they all see the pain or joy I've endured in the works they themselves have felt before.


Wow, in a decade. I don't even know what I have planned for tomorrow haha
 ummm... hm....
I really want a dog. 
And, I would like to have my own, big studio. 
A dog and a studio, working on my next piece for an exhibition. Happy as a clam.











What kind of dog?








 Any sad looking dog that needs love, haha.











Haha, well Saint Haejung, do you have any artists that you stalk regularly? I don't, really.
 I have a tendency to get bored with things extremely quick and easily, so I have different favourite artists probably every two days, haha. 
I bookmark few artists that really have poked something in me, but I can list a few names:

Mari Kojima
Bridget Collins
Anders Krisar
Petros Koublis

Oh, but an artist I have been sort of obsessed with since school up 'til now is Eva Hesse. I fell in love with the way she made work and her philosophy behind art.

Interesting that they all dabble in photography and sculpture - do you think you would ever try your hand at mediums beyond illustration?









 
I've dipped my hands into some film photography but I don't think I have that initial drive to push it further like I do with my drawings. 
I'll probably keep making photographs but I don't know when I'll allow myself to call them artworks... if that makes any sense.











Coooooool beans. So lets get a bit more obscure, Mozart or Elvis?









 Mozart. I do love my classical time to time









.

Where have you experienced the best food in your life thus far?









 I would always crave home food after being out for a while. Good hearty Korean food made by my mom and dad.











What would be your favourite Korean dish?









 Mul naengmyeon, which is a cold noodle dish... It's great during summer time.











Yummm.
 And tell me, what do you think, from your experience, is the meaning of life?









 Meaning of life... is to be the very you that you can be. 
I would hate to leave this world knowing that there is someone else like me existing.