Yi Ok-seon

100x100 cm
Archival digital print on paper

Yajima Tsukasa 
Gwangju, South Korea

2005

Transcription under the portrait



Audio transcription


On my fingers I count the years
Of living in a foreign land.
In the more than ten years since I left home
Only the spring of my youth’s grown old.
The willow in front of my home
Will be green this spring also…
When I folded the willow leaf and blew it like a fife
Those were the olden days

Josh: “What is the meaning of ‘Tahyang Sali?’”
Yi Okseon: “Leaving home, leaving your hometown—you, for example.
You’ve come all the way over here, right?
That’s Tahyang Sali” (living in a foreign land).
Because it’s not your hometown.
You go to a foreign land,
you stay there for a long time,
and after some ten years the spring of your youth’s grown old.
So you become a grandpa or a grandma.
That’s what it means, that one.”



Extract from Living in a Foreign Land