Location: OCI headquarters 1st Floor, Sun the Bud

Exhibition Period: May 16 – August 30, 2024

The king leaves the palace and ascends toward the heavens.

“Boom, boom, boom”—the drums resound.

A dragon rises into the sky and delivers its message to heaven.

On the first mu day of the second lunar month,

a ritual offering is performed.

Prayers are made to the gods of earth and grain.

“Rice, barley, rice, rice, rice, barley, barley, rice…”

Something begins to emerge from the ground.

One hopes it may become a seed symbolizing abundance and well-being.

Across the surface linger traces of life’s origins and prayers for existence, slowly unfolding and blooming.

Artist Song Yunju constructs her own visual world through the use of gwaesang diagrams and pictographic characters—forms once used to express human codes and systems through images and writing. The firmly layered surfaces, built up through dozens of applications of white pigment, together with flat symbolic marks carrying the artist’s thoughts, reveal their material presence while depicting humanity’s interaction with nature.

In this exhibition, the artist carefully renders the five staple grains known as ogok—rice, barley, beans, millet, and foxtail millet—alongside coffee beans, introduced here as a contemporary grain.

Visitors are also invited to encounter the landscapes of Deoksugung and Sajikdan, located in the heart of Seoul, and to enjoy discovering the meanings hidden within the pictographic symbols embedded in the works.