I think there is something for me

"I Think There Is Something for Me"began during my time near the Romania-Moldova border. Through spending time with teenage girls I met there, the project became less about the border itself and more about remembering parts of my own adolescence in Korea.

I Think There Is Something for Me

Maybe I keep thinking about the things that separate us.

I try to imagine in reverse how I came to know the people living in these small streets near the border, inside these houses.

I do not want to make a political or social statement.

I spend time with teenage girls here and begin remembering my own forgotten school years in Korea. Both of my parents worked, so after school I spent most of my time moving between private academies and an empty home. The feeling of returning home after school, around 4 or 5pm, when the light was beginning to disappear in that strange in-between hour.

The girls I became close with here message me after school ends.

“Yeeun, where are you now?”
“What are you doing?”

If I send them my location, they come. One says she has time before dance class. We walk around a newly built shopping mall looking at cosmetics, then all go together to the supermarket to buy donuts.

Nothing can really cover over your honesty or innocence!

At first there were only three of us. After dance class, Eva brought another friend. Eva’s older sister joined us after school. Her new boyfriend came too. Then another friend’s boyfriend joined. We walked all the way to the border between Romania and Moldova. It was literally a cliff. There, we unexpectedly met another friend. We kept growing like a snowball.

Through them, I experience parts of my own childhood again. Back then I was full of resistance toward the idea of university, and because I wanted to become an artist, I felt I had to show that I was different from everyone else, even outwardly. The piercings I got at that time are no longer on my nose or ears. The tattoo I got as soon as I turned twenty is something I sometimes want to erase now.

Take care until the moment we meet again.