ANNETTE HUR

RIGHT Kisaeng, 2019 Oil on canvas 70" × 59.5"

NEXT SPREAD, LEFT Slower Time, 2019 Oil on canvas 80" × 68"

NEXT SPREAD, RIGHT Untitled, 2019 Mixed media 13" × 9.5"

Dream Writing

1. My child gets away from me, she jumps in the car and starts driving. I should feel fearful, I should feel so scared of her getting into an accident, she may die, she may kill people. I don’t know what she is trying to do by driving, where she’s going, or what she wants. I do not fear anything. I wait. She hits three men on the street. She made the turn towards them. I run towards the car, not to the men she hit, I hold my child in my arms knowing that she is fine. I feel fine.

2. I see an art in a dark room. I actually don’t know if its an art. I was dragged into the room somehow, don’t remember by who or why. I’m just going to call the thing ‘art’. The art is trying to show me something, but I can’t tell what it is. The art is a box, big enough to fit a dozen bodies in. It looks so old, almost some kind of a relic. The top opens. I feel fear to look in. The shadows of figures in the room are watching me, waiting for me to look into the box. ‘I’m not going to look.’ Not because I am afraid of dead bodies or ghosts or... anything really. I just know there is something that I do not want to see in the box and maybe my heart will stop beating. Fear engulfs me and I look above instead. The wall where abstracted mountains-or just the profusion of green nature-are painted. This room is too dark! But the painting is also sunless. I just feel it is full of impasto, coarsely painted. My eyes are fixed on the painting but they imagine something else in an attempt to not think about the inside of the box. I never looked.

3. I am very tired, half-asleep. Can’t really see or move but I know it is you, lying down next to me. You touch me on my waist, then my thigh, then my intimate area. My blurred eyes see you leave and I think maybe I am dreaming. No. There’s you again lying on a bed. I see your soft breasts, I lay down on them. I want to be pleased. But I have to run, I have to run and please someone else. For what reason? I run and run until I am told to prepare tea for the other person. Someone I know, someone I’ve missed, someone I also want to be pleased by. Oh man, preparing tea takes too long. My hands are restless out of anxiety. I don’t know if it is the right tea. He leaves. He leaves through an opening of a crazy architecture that looks like a Serra’s sculpture or maybe more like the largest concert hall in Thailand I’ve seen in a picture . He says bye. No he just waved his hand. I drank the tea.

4. It is a place I’ve never seen. So Bright, warm but cool, blue skies, pleasant air with almost a color of orange embracing everything. Everything is in peace. In a far distance, there are other people, working, cooking, maybe gardening. The brightest pink. It is pink that I have never seen before. “Hi Granpa” I can’t speak further. He is wearing the pink shirt, looking healthier than ever. He is looking into a lens that leads to nowhere it seems. So carefully. He gently taps on the bench and I sit next to him. We are under the shade. I start crying, I want to say something. Something like ‘I miss you, I am sorry, what are you looking into, where is this place, are you coming back’. He goes ‘shhhhh’, still looking into the tiny lens. He says, ‘ Stop crying, you shouldn’t be sad, there is nothing to be sad about’. I feel that he is actually looking at us through the lens. My family. Just people. Who are still in agony. I am sorry, see you later, I love you.