SENA PARK

During the first lockdown, I stayed at my parents’ house in Paihia. I took a short walking track right next to their house. On the track, I spent more time observing the nature than before. It was the only thing I could do outside of my home. Every day, I recorded my walking route. I realised there were numerous spider webs along the path where many people must have passed by every day. Sometime, I just stood watching the spider webs’ movements in the breeze. Spider webs catch small sized creatures such as insects as well as tiny leaves and water drops. Even though our world had stopped, the spider must never stop their activities. It may sound like nothing special but it was a big moment of awareness for me. If spider webs symbolised fear when I was young in Korea, the webs made me feel alive during the lockdown period in New Zealand. I perceived that we live obliviously amongst many creatures in every moment. 

One day, I discovered there were cohabitants inside of my installation Aliveness_Symbiosis. My involuntary cohabitants were real living spiders. They built spider webs connected to my human-made one.
They were so delicate and weak. But they seemed strong enough to survive and reside here with us.

My project Aliveness_Symbiosis continued not only for 10 weeks, it started much earlier than my residency. However, it took less than half a day to deinstall it. I had to destroy the newly built spider webs which were attached to my human-made spider web. With it, I disassembled the work as a symbol of symbiosis. 
I have thought about this situation and it implies to me how human beings destroy nature which only tries to live with us intentionally or unintentionally.