In Past Lives, Seonna Hong excavates the way experiences seem to stack upon each other, sometimes slipping through or re-emerging when we don’t expect them. Through her signature abstract vistas, Hong creates what can be called “memory landscapes,” vast scenes that layer themes of environmental destruction, personal reflections, and the artist’s own Korean heritage.
On view at Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Past Lives comprises 32 works, many of which have been altered from their original form. For example, the Los Angeles-based artist revised “The Loved Ones” by softening the edges of bulky, striped blocks in the background and anonymizing a pair of young girls while giving their figures more clarity. “Selective Abstraction” is similar and features a bolder streak of bright pink across the canvas, a recurring mark in Hong’s latest works.
The exhibition title comes from Celine Song’s 2023 film structured around inyeon, an ancient concept of fated love that emerges in one life after another. Hong adds:
I have included pieces that show my past lives as well as older works that, in the spirit of re-use, repurpose, and upcycling, have been painted into and brought from the past into the present, being mindful to not just gesso over the canvas (a literal and metaphorical whitewash) but include some of its history, the layers.
With barren trees, colorful mounds, and diminutive figures ambling among the terrain, the paintings emphasize the ways the past emerges in the present. Despite their bright hues, Hong’s landscapes are deteriorating and experiencing the very real blight of climate disaster. Two new pieces depict figures in the parched Atacama desert, clambering atop enormous heaps of discarded clothing. Bringing the immense waste of fast fashion and consumerism to the fore, the compositions capture the ways our decisions are never relegated to the past and how our choices affect even the most sparsely populated regions on the planet.
As with previous bodies of work, Hong’s Korean ancestry appears, as well. A large, upright bear shifts its weight to one side in “More Bridges Less Walls.” The animal plays an important role in a Korean creation myth, which says that the powerful, devoted mammal was turned into a woman who went on to start the nation.
Past Lives is on view through June 22 in Moraga, California. Find more from Hong on Instagram.
