Ice Vault

The Ice Vault series is an ongoing project rooted in the Eulsukdo Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Busan, where the artist lives. The artist translates sensory impressions gathered from nature into drawings, then fragments and freezes them within ice to explore the relationship between preservation and change.

By bringing human attempts to control preservation into dialogue with the threshold phenomena of thawing and disappearance within nature’s own rhythms, the project examines ecological change and instability amid the climate crisis.

More recently, the project has extended to seaweed and salt-tolerant plants collected by the artist in Dadaepo, Busan, and frozen within ice made from seawater. Holding the life and traces of a place, the ice becomes a temporary vault. As it melts over time, it reveals what lies within. Through this process, the artist considers the limits of preservation, the rhythms of nature, and the changing relationships of life within them.