Park Yelim: Earth Palimpsest

A palimpsest refers to a surface on which an existing record is erased and overwritten with a new one. The concept, in which earlier traces remain beneath subsequent layers of inscription, resonates with Park Yelim’s way of observing and remembering nature. For Park, a landscape is not fixed as a single visual experience; rather, as new experiences and memories accumulate over forms that have faded with time, it continually takes on new forms.

Working with materials such as hanji, ink, and sand, Park’s practice explores the relationship between the moment of encountering nature and the landscape that remains in memory. Through the reconfiguration of familiar forms of nature, Park reveals how memory absorbs and redraws the landscape.

Within the exhibition space, the varied surfaces created through painting and the use of materials form a continuous spatial progression. As viewers move closer to the works or navigate through the space, they encounter both the minute traces accumulated on the surfaces and images that converge into a singular scene. Up close, the traces left by the materials become visible; from a distance, disparate elements come together to form a landscape. Through the accumulation and rewriting of traces of nature, Earth Palimpsest gives spatial form to landscapes that transform through time and memory.