A PIECE OF HER MIND, A FLOWER FROM HER GARDEN, A SCENT FROM HER PAST: BONGSU PARK’S JANHYNG SERIES

Juliana Montoya

Bongsu Park Janhayang: Wed 30 April, 2025 Iris, Hyacinthoides, Alliaria, Papaver, Geranium, Allium, Artemisia, plaster and oil on canvas, beech shelf, Air-dried clay pot, fragrance of Wed 30 April 2025 73.5 x 151 x 2.5 cm 29 x 59 1/2 x 1 in © Bongsu Park. Courtesy the Artist. 

From a deeply private realm to an instrument of generosity and connection, Bongsu Park transforms our understanding of the mind by inviting her audience to bridge what we assumed to be solitary and personal with the communal through reflection on dreams and memories.  

In her Dream Auction (2021) series, Park draws upon the lasting Korean tradition of buying and selling dreams. Her performance sparked a spirited bidding battle over something as intangible as a thought. In Korean culture, dreams carry auspicious omens that can be transferred through a simple exchange of energies and good faith. By sharing and interpreting dreams, we may identify symbols that reveal something about our lives or futures. Dreams with positive associations become highly valued assets that others may acquire. By auctioning her own dreams, Park welcomed her audience into the most intimate corners of her mind; she bridged the profoundly personal with the public to explore how our most interior experiences can cast impressions on our social lives, finding an expression of the subconscious in them. 

Bongsu Park, MIRROR (2024), Performance, Gallery Rosenfeld. © Bongsu Park. Courtesy the Artist.

Her 2024 performance series MIRROR marks a transition from dreams to memory while maintaining her characteristic fascination with the dialogue between inner life and collective experience. Through a multi-disciplinary collaboration, Park directs a sensory-rich performance where scent, sound, and tactile stimuli evoke forgotten and fragmented memories. She creates a dynamic, layered scene where three other artists join her to guide the audience through her innermost self. Haedong Lee evokes the passage of time through an electronic soundscape that complements Kristin Winters’ dramatic reading of Park’s recorded recollections. Simultaneously, Yidan Kim appeals to scent, crafting fragrances designed to connect the audience with Park’s memories as she passes around air-dried clay pots whose shape embody specific recollections. The different stimuli in orchestra invites awareness of how memory shapes our sense of self, shedding light on what we may continuously feel, but find difficult to express. Park achieves a delicate, incredibly powerful paradox: a meditation on individuality through collective experience. 

Bongsu Park Janhayang: Wed 30 April, 2025 Iris, Hyacinthoides, Alliaria, Papaver, Geranium, Allium, Artemisia, plaster and oil on canvas, beech shelf, Air-dried clay pot, fragrance of Wed 30 April 2025  73.5 x 151 x 2.5 cm 29 x 59 1/2 x 1 in © Bongsu Park. Courtesy the Artist. 

Out of this exploration, in an almost unexpected creative turn, the Janhyng series emerged as a continuation of her study of memory, time, and emotion. Korean for “reverberation,” Janhyng refers to the lingering scent that remains in a space for a certain period as well as the lasting echoes of a sound once it has stopped. 

Once again, Park constructs a layered, multisensory experience that evokes the feeling of a faded memory, something that no longer is, but that has left an emotional state behind. Each piece becomes an archive of gestures and processes, extending beyond the material presence of canvas, clay, and scent. Together, they reproduce the emotional atmosphere of a given moment; each becomes a tangible remnant of an experience. The works are named after their dates of creation, reflecting Park’s interest in preserving a distinct event and feeling. As viewers, we are invited to place our own memories in dialogue with hers, finding echoes of our personal experience in the sensory stimuli she creates. 

Using plants brought from her Korean birthplace or grown in her London home, Park imprints camellias, hyacinths, irises, primulas, and veronicas onto fabric to create sculptural paintings with fragile floral compositions that carry the force of visual memory. These are accompanied by handcrafted air-dried clay pots, like those used in MIRROR, each containing a unique scent composed by Park herself using the same flowers depicted on its corresponding canvas to transport viewers to a shared space where memory becomes both personal and familiar.   

Bongsu Park Janhyang: Mon 2 June, 2025 Potentilla, Lilium bulbiferum, Lavandula, Senecio cineraria, Hibiscus syriacus, Achillea millefolium, plaster and oil on linen, beech shelf, Air-dried clay pot, fragrance of Mon 2 June 2025 74 x 91 x 11 cm 29 1/8 x 35 7/8 x 4 3/8 in © Bongsu Park. Courtesy the Artist. 

Following the success of the Janhyng series’ debut at The Armory Show this past summer, Park presented a new chapter of the project during Frieze Week in an intimate gathering of friends and family at Gallery Rosenfeld. As the seasons turned, the works mirror an emotional shift within her. The spring blossoms that gave her early pieces vibrant ranges of blues and greens gradually transform into softer, warmer hues of orange and yellow. Her three latest pieces, completed in late September, feature Park’s experimentation with new seasonal plants: Rosa multiflora, Alcea rosea, Asparagus officinalis, Ocimum basilicum, Artemisia, and Trifolium. Most notably, she experimented with dyes made from mugwort or ssook, an herb central to Korean cuisine and ritual life yet difficult to cultivate in England.  

What began as an individual practice has gently expanded into collaboration. When a friend brought her mugwort from Korea, her gesture became part of the work itself. The plant connects Park to her mother and childhood, shaping the forms of her clay pots and the arrangements of her flowers. Its journey mirrors the emotional thread at the core of Park’s practice, reproducing in herself the same effect she intends for her audience: to look at personal history through the lens of shared experience, bridging memory and material, self and others. Park ultimately seeks to transform private affections such as dreams, emotions, or personal narratives, from solitary and singular to part of an open and shared realm.