We are of the Mountain

Last year I was selected to complete a public art commission at the Albuquerque Sunport. My proposal is called We are of the Mountain and will live on a 17’ x 50’ wall in front of the TSA security line.

We are of the Mountain is a line from a bilingual poem honoring my halmoni (grandmother) and her life journey as a refugee, war survivor, and immigrant. It is also a line from a Korean folk song I wrote and routinely chant to the Sandia Mountains that loom above Albuquerque. 

The Sandias are my stand-in for Paektusan, which is the mountain at the northern border of Korea and China from which my surname is born and where my family originates. The design concept I am proposing is based on Irworobongdo, the royal Korean screen painting that depicts a stylized moon, sun, and five mountain peaks. While specific to a culture that is not predominant in New Mexico, the universality of my aesthetic language is expansive and inclusive. My rendition of the royal painting utilizes triangles as mountain icons, incorporates a skyline of the Sandias, cottonwood tree silhouettes, the stretch of the New Mexico sky, the heavenly bodies that inhabit it, and references the gradation of bright neon pink and rich maroons that sweep up the Sandias at sunset.

My mural is based on the Korean royal painting depicting 5 sacred mountains. And, the ‘We’ in the title is inclusive of the people and place of Albuquerque, which has a mountain range defining its landscape. The mural depicts the Sandia mountains, references the 5 royal mountains of Korea, and many cultures worldwide that ascribe spiritual significance to mountains. The mural is bicultural, transcontinental, and intended to be culturally and spiritually inclusive. The mural concept is a refection of me - a person who is culturally and gender hybrid and fluid, with roots that trace across the Pacific Ocean and into the land of New Mexico.

I am drawing an intercontinental line between land, mountain, tree, culture, and community. The mural will create a unique sense of place and distinctly New Mexico experience that also globally connects people and cultures. It will include portraits of trees that live along the 35th parallel, which intersects through Albuquerque and the southern end of the Korean peninsula. It is culturally specific and expansive at the same time and can be engaged with by a traveler of any age, culture, or gender.