When I Land in Narnia

When I Land in Narnia is an installation-based project unfolding at the intersection of the artist’s transnational migration and the forced displacement of her grandmother, Kim Si-dol, who, due to the Korean War, was never able to return to her hometown in Hamgyeong-do. Situated in different historical contexts, these movements reveal how easily spatial stability can be unsettled.
As two generations’ migrations overlap, “home” emerges not as a fixed origin but as a condition reshaped through movement, memory, and time. Rather than a singular place, it appears as a construct formed through personal experience and political history—fragmented and subject to transformation.
At the center stands a mother-of-pearl wardrobe that once belonged to the grandmother. Functioning as both object and metaphor, it becomes a threshold between past and present, reality and imagination—an entry into a layered landscape the artist calls “Narnia.” This is not a fantasy realm, but a conceptual site where memory and displacement intersect.
The installation combines digital images, diary entries, a book merging autobiographical writing with a Wikipedia-like structure, objects, video, and sound. Book of Narnia makes the work’s development visible while guiding visitors into its imagined landscapes. A layered soundscape composed of recordings from Wat Phra That Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai and footage of a Seollal ancestral ritual documented by the artist’s father fills the space.
The project does not reconstruct a lost homeland. Instead, it examines how a place beyond return persists in the present—home as an evolving condition shaped by memory and experience.