I stopped by the Tate Modern on the southbank of the Thames in London for the first time this afternoon. I've been meaning to go since I moved here, especially after I found out that I could spend an entire afternoon wandering amongst modern art for free, but I just never got around to it. Then my very good friend from Seoul, Una Yeyo, recently informed me that a piece she styled which she had me model for was going to be in a Korean magazine called Onepiece / 운피스 and was now available in the Tate book shop. The theme of this issue of Onepiece was 'Boy' (sonyeon / 소년 in Korean) and Una styled me wearing a variety of necklaces and accessories that she handmade specifically for the shoot, which was taken on the rooftop of my old apartment in Seoul overlooking the US army base in the center of the city. Here is what the article had to say:
"Artist Una's first love was in junior high. There was a boy who liked her, from a nearby all boys junior high school where he was the class president. Though he professed just how much he adored her, he never gathered enough courage to actually talk to her, instead asking his friend to send her messages. And so it was the Una spent more time talking with this friend than with the class president, and naturally, she began to like him instead. Yet soon enough, a rumor about her and the class presidents relationship spread, and it became difficult for her to confess her feelings to the friend. All she could do was watch him from afar. In the end, her first love ended as a crush. 'Boy', according to Una, is one who is still innocent enough to be more earnest than an adult, whose imagination has yet been tarnished, who is among the group of individuals who are still searching for self identity, and thus any adult can indeed be a boy anywhere, anytime.
The model in the photographs is an adult white male, but at times, you can discover the boy in him. A man doesn't only appear to be a man, and a boy only a boy. There can be a grown man who seems like a boy, and vice versa. Through this project, Una wanted to merge many different stories. The west and the east, the past and the present, authority and equality - she wanted to include all of these aspects."
xoxochadchad
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