Lee MoonJae

1. A root is merely a concept for animals, yet for plants, it indicates existence; it is their source of life. As humans started collecting and cultivating plants, the function, image, and meaning of roots must have been imprinted in the deeper side of our consciousness.

2. Animal roots, including those of humans, are grounded in plants, while plant roots are in soil and atmosphere, namely, heaven and earth.

3. Roots are not heliotropic. They orient themselves against the sun and toward the underground. Like how new leaves sprout from tree branches, the roots become one with soil through fine roots. As roots unite with soil and leaves meet sunlight and air, the plant grows. It is an existence that cohabits with heaven and earth, between the sky and the ground. Plants have been beings between heaven and earth much earlier than animals—the true heaven-earth-life.

4. When I raise my head to gaze at a winter tree with all its leaves fallen, its branches spread into the sunlight and atmosphere, resembling roots. In that sense, roots correspond to branches extending underground.

5. There exist eradicated people, as well as eradicated families, eradicated society and culture, and eradicated ideologies and politics.

6. No life is shabbier than eradicated or rootless ones. Even in adopting a dog at home, people ask about their genealogy. Are they purebred or crossbred? When human lineage, genealogy, and hierarchy are vertical roots, alum connections and acquaintances are horizontal. In addition, tradition, heritage, transmission, and succession are closely related to roots. In Buddhism, “Indra’s net” indicates a universal network that stretches vastly and meticulously.

7. There used to be so-called lives rooted in specific geographies. We have never forgotten or lost our local culture, not even readily handed it over. We could instead say we are deprived of it without even noticing. We boast of convenience and wealth seemingly gained from discarding old and shabby things, but most of those novelties are “sugarcoated.” In many cases, they are nicely packed explosives. There are rarely people or times that pay attention to precious things we have lost in exchange for new things.

8. The city expelled nature from it. It stands upon carved-out, filled, and covered soil and invents artificial “nature.” It gets rid of soil. As soil disappeared, so did communal virtues that were generated from it. In a city, land is either a property or an object of development.

9. In a city, there is no ground to take root in (here, “ground” is the actual surface of the earth and a metaphor for soil). A society of lives with no ground is that of migrants. Migrants who cross national borders are not the only diaspora; we are all diaspora. We, the eradicated people, are a “domestic diaspora” expelled within a city, from one town to another, and within our own country.

10. Ground also exists in a city, yet it is an artifact. A high-rise is a structure that stacks ground (earth’s surface) in layers. An office on the 60th floor is a layer of the earth’s surface lifted 180 meters in height. Underground space is the opposite. Whether we sit on a top-floor lounge to enjoy the night cityscape or travel underground riding on the subway, we are always connected to the earth’s surface. We could say that we depart from it aboard a plane or ship. However, be it in the sky or on the ocean, we are not escaping the ground, as they connect ways on land. Thus, what ships and planes transport are those ways.

11. This preamble is getting longer than I thought.

12. Roots occupy a central space in Yun-hee Huh’s painting. It is one of the various objects that appear in her work, such as flowers, faces (figures or manifestations of inner sides), houses, mountains, and glaciers. When we say objects, these are often projected with typical prejudices on “specific genres,” yet I perceive objects as fundamental elements directly connected to subject matters. Among such, roots play a considerable role. Huh takes root for representing rootless beings. In Boat and House (2005), a house is depicted with roots, while in Feet (2000), human feet also take root and sprout leaves. Whereas trees grow from a head like in Wind in the Hair (2000), a person’s feet must be grounded in soil. In other words, her painting “discovers” roots from rootless things, which is a powerful metaphor. Her imagination binding remote things together is not different from a poet’s.

13. The imagination of a house with spreading roots goes beyond sociology and reaches anthropology. When building a house, North American Indians must have planted cactus roots below the cornerstone. Then, the house would be settled and rooted to become kin to soil-earth. A house is an artifact, yet all of its component materials are from nature. Incapable of imagining the root of a house, our civilization has not blossomed. That is what we actually are: unable to open ourselves toward the nature of heaven and earth, losing the imagination of soil and geological sensibility. We have to open up ourselves and remain so.

14. The protagonists of Huh’s painting are lives excluded from industrialized civilization, such as roots, flowers, leaves, seeds, etc. The fundamental reason contemporaries or city people are destined to live internally and externally insecure and unstable lives is not far from this exclusion. Huh’s painting addresses this situation powerfully to us, wildly, urgently, and desperately, because we have lost our roots and are disconnected from the nature of heaven and earth.

15. Perhaps it is also for this reason that the human–persons in her paintings are blurred or overlaid in multiple layers (whereas humans are biological beings, persons are social ones. Based on this distinction of mine, when they stand in front of an elephant, they are humans; meanwhile, when going to work or looking into a mirror, they are persons). They seem to convey that human–persons’ internal landscape also becomes infernal when the relation with nature disjoints. They warn us that we cannot be reborn as human–persons unless we reestablish our lost connection to the soil. In short, forgetting our grounds will cause ordeals!

16. Roots are the origin of plants, as well as animal life. I intend to name “powerful vegetativeness” as the motivation or one of the core values of Huh’s painting that explores roots.

17. Plants also mirror the entirety of our lives. If we could “literally” read the circumstances plants face, we could immediately grasp the truth of our weaknesses and the fatal falsity of industrialized civilization. In this sense, Huh’s powerful vegetativeness is also a “powerful message.”

18. Through plants, her painting goes beyond revealing our lives’ actual and substantial roots and sharply criticizes a fatal weakness—the vital point—of our society, times, and civilization. It seems to be a natural result when her focus ranges from extinct wild plants to polar glaciers.

19. To anticipate the conclusion, Huh’s artistic interest is as wide and deep as the dimensions of Mother Earth. I have been claiming that artists must be greater than their works, and I believe Huh’s case as an artist definitely proves it. There are surprisingly many cases where works are greater than their authors. Transcending artists consistent in their work, artists surpassing their work create leaps to “a better today,” a future different from now.

20. Now is the time to mention charcoal and “drawing for erasing,” which is a rather challenging subject for me. Charcoal is close to nature. Pencils or brushes are not distant from nature either. Yet compared to charcoal, made by burning wood, they involve human processing. Charcoal is a lump of carbon—a tool that is an atomic substance per se. It is the most adequate “brush” for Huh’s drawing. When she draws trees with charcoal, it means to “draw trees with trees.” In other words, by expressing nature through nature, she makes us reflect on nature. Naturalizing through renaturalizing and connecting such artistic concepts with alternative civil movements! I perceive it as the ultimate goal of Huh’s artistic spirit.

21. Huh draws to erase, and charcoal is the best choice for this. As such, her act of drawing departs from immortality by far. Every work of art was produced by an artist in the past. However, Huh’s charcoal drawing has neither past nor future. Her “act of drawing” is present in real time, then dissipates. It is a one-time performance. The original disappears, only leaving behind photographic or video documentation as an alibi. It is hard for me to grasp such a state of surprise.

22. “Die before you die” is an aphorism by a 13th-century Persian poet of mysticism. Every time I recall the line, I see the analogy with the destiny of art. For every work of art, if true, its author must perish upon its completion. Artists who do not die with their works of art cannot be reborn. In Huh’s “erasing drawings,” I see the face of a real artist who dies with the work and is reborn with a new one.

23. True artists who repeat being born and dying with the work before their biological death are “betraying artists.” This is an illogical line, yet art that does not betray conventional art is not true art. Here, a problem arises. Artists not betrayed by the next generation of artists are unlucky. Betraying and betrayed artists—I believe such artists lead artistic progress. In this light, Huh will soon be betrayed.

24. By employing charcoal, Huh does not only focus on “erasing and drawing.” Ironically, she also leaves traces by erasing. When she takes her brush and wets it with colors, she emits a “strong documenting power,” as in Diary of Leaves (2008–2022), a series of exhibitions on extinct plants. As she showcased 268 kinds of extinct plants, she called their names one by one with the viewers. From such evocation and mourning (which reminds me of the Sewol Ferry Disaster), I recognize again Huh’s artistic spirit that approaches Mother Earth.

25. Vegetativeness is close to femininity in the same way animality is to masculinity. The emphasis on vegetativeness is a criticism of animality and an effort to overcome the dysfunctions of masculinity. Moving from animality to vegetativeness indicates a shift. From men to women, days to nights, individuals to communities; from endless competitions and winner-take-all strategies to friendship and hospitality; and from productivity to sustainability—we need a shift from modern to ecological civilization, as addressed by Kim Jong Chul on Green Review.

26. “The end has begun” is a line from the HBO series Chernobyl (2019).

27. Drawing melting glaciers with charcoal and painting extinct plants with color, Huh heeds the “end” of the industrialized civilization. Yes, we ought to begin before the end ends. When the end is over, it is really over. Our mass extinction is approaching. Thus, we must start anew before the end ends. Together. We need to initiate the shift, and the sensibility of roots and vegetative imagination must be restored and shared.

28. I had to ponder longer on the work of “drawing and erasing,” yet it was challenging. Sadly, I am not knowledgeable enough to reach the essential meaning intrinsic to drawing–erasing. I hope to become able to add up a few more words to “Huh’s drawing” through reading, pondering, and living longer.

1. Ending this rough and hasty writing, I dedicate a modest poem to Huh’s work and artistic spirit. I entitled it, “The Front Here and Now.”

A tree begins from its ends.

It always begins from the end.

From fine roots to sprigs and treetops

From sprouts to flowers and fruit

A tree begins entirely from its ends.

Here and now is the end.

Trees, soil, water, wind, and sunlight

They are all at the front, as they are at the end.

Memories, longing, solitude, desperation, tears, and wrath

Dreams, hopes, empathy, pity, solidarity, and love

History, times, civilizations, evolution, the earth, and the universe

Are all at the front, here and now.

Here and now, I am facing this front.

Lee MoonJae is a poet and a professor at the Humanitas College, Kyung Hee University, Seoul.