Portland-based Korean artist Samantha Wall draws perceptive representations of women who exhibit a range of emotions and attitude. Her experience with ‘multi-raciality’ between living in Korea and now the United States inspired her latest drawings, “Indivisible” but it has roots in her previous works. Her simple yet profound drawings are the result of her own experiences and feelings. Emotional desire creates moments of hyper awareness, a characteristic specific to human nature. Wall believes that how we position ourselves in the world directly relates to our bond with others.
Between expression and release is where her subjects live. The basic medium of graphite and charcoal is ‘chipped away’ to reveal their core identity, until race is left totally ambiguous. Some are embodied as faint, dark shadows, while others appear to excrete their own embodiments. Wall describes them as “private encounters with the self” at her website, which is a wealth of personal insight into her work. We are not just subject to our own plurality emotionally, but also physically, as we surround ourselves with material needs. In her series, “In the event of disaster…”, Wall combines these two themes in her version of the Apocalypse. In this bleak vision of the future, everything is obscured by smoke and haunted by ghostly images. It’s a warning not to let our emotions get the best of us and control our lives.
“Indivisible”:
“Shame on Me”:
“In the event of disaster…”:
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