JANI Studios

My work is centered around themes of nostalgia, longing, and grief. It includes autobiographical elements as well as ties to specific places and times. I am interested in the inevitable, entanglements, and how separations over time and space create fragments within ourselves. I break my work into four main themes: The Inevitables, Longing for a place that no longer exists, Fragments of, and Our Entanglement; though sometimes they themselves also intersect. I am also interested in materials and how each material carries their own inherent meaning and value, but not necessarily how humans place value onto material from a capitalistic standpoint.

The Inevitables

Inevitable: A certainty; something incapable of being avoided, prevented, or evaded; all of the events that have ever happened or will ever happen in my life. The inevitables are where many of the autobiographical elements of my work start to seep in. Narratives of life events that I(we) did not have a choice over; a moment that changed our lives forever–good or bad. When I talk about inevitables there’s a sense of time that comes into play, but not a linear time, a broader scale of time, stacked time, or a continuation of the same time. This is where I talk about pastness but not of the past, because if I conceded to these events, the inevitables, as if they were truly the past then they would not still be part of my present or my future. They have become a part of myself, a part of this current time that we exist in in space. The example I usually give for people to understand these inevitables is an autobiographical inevitable–the one of when my father died. In the loss of my father both my “past” and present collided instantaneously. It was the recognition point where I realized the past is actually just a continuation of pastness; where time stopped being linear; where the inevitables became a state of being. But without this event, this inevitable–perhaps a convoluted way to view death and something that caused and causes so much grief–I would not be where I am currently. In thinking about these types of inevitables, what can we do except to wish that the event had never occurred? The Inevitables though do not only have to relate to events of grief, sometimes they are just events where there was no option. This is where the interest in the inevitables really lies for me. How events in which we have no other option–whether the choice was ours or an external factor that made the choice for us–alters our lives forever. In my work you will often see a cross over between The Inevitables and our entanglements. Where The Inevitables are based around inevitable chance, a meeting based on fate–운명–but I will talk about that more within Our Entanglement.

Longing for a place that no longer exists

Places are an integration of both time and space, which create specified spatio-temporal events. This is why longing to “go back” to a place is not possible. This is the facade we set up in our minds–which I too am guilty of–to make us think we can reexperience a place, as if it's the exact same as the state we left it last, but now, in the present. In the linear sense of time, “going back” is not possible. As linear time progresses forward, so do places. I am interested in how we long for these places that no longer actually exist. For example from the last time you went home to right at this current moment you are reading this… your home has changed. It is not the same, because to stay the same would mean it–as well as the land it is on–has broken the construct of linear time; it would have had to freeze the instant you left. The space in and around it would have had to become immobile, the people, the plants, the animals, everything within and around your home would have had to stop in time. This is why I am so interested in the sense of longing and nostalgia that humans have created within our minds; because although I can not literally “go back home” I will still go to that place I call home and accept the changes that occurred during that time while I was in another place as if nothing really changed. And then as if an inevitable force struck, the cycle will start anew, this new version of the changed home will be what I long for the next time I am separated across space and decide to “go back home”. 

In this same context what is Home–or any place for that matter–and why do we even feel the sense of longing to go back to it? Home(n) one’s place of residence; a place of origin; the social unit formed by a family living together; a familiar or usual setting: congenial environment. There are so many definitions to the word home, it can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, and yet somehow I still am not really sure what home even means. For me home isn’t found in a “place” or a “space” any longer. It’s one of these fragments in myself that just fills me with the feelings of comfort and nostalgia–yet it also leaves me in a void of emptiness and longing. It’s this weird pseudo space in my limbic system that is hazy; a place I can no longer visit in the physical world. 

Don’t you also find it strange how a “place” you lived your whole life no longer feels like home–as if it is now a stranger. For years I have walked the same sidewalks where restaurants and coffee shops and people line the streets. The familiarity of walking the same path was done subconsciously with ease; yet when I looked up and came to, I realized everything was different. The physical place was no longer home–it was just a place that I knew at a distant point in my life that had now become a stranger. In this same context there is still a longing for these places; home is just an example of one of many places that I long for that no longer exist in our physical world. They exist in a mind space, they exist in time, they do still somewhat exist in the physical but they too have moved on.

Then there are these spatio-temporal events; a place; in which something in you fragments and you leave a part of yourself there. I am interested in how certain places also create this fragmentation. I speak often about my time in Korea and Jeju, a geographic place, that has become a second home. But I have not truly explained what causes this feeling; a small dirt parking spot just off the side of the road, the lava rocks pouring into the ocean, the sound of waves rolling over them, the smell of the clean ocean air, a beautiful sunset, and a rock that seemed perfectly made for just us; this place, this specific temporal space where longing is created and exists.

Our Entanglement

When we think of entanglement it is usually in relation to entangled particles, the theory in which no matter what the distance is between these particles they will respond instantaneously to the other; where when you know where one particle is you can immediately find the other. This physics theory was the basis for my interest in Our Entanglement. But in my version this exists between humans, between non-humans, and between those who have already passed on from the physical space in which we live as well. The interest in Our Entanglement also stemmed from an east asian story based around the red string of fate; where two lovers were tied in death together by a red string attached to their pinkies in death. They were tied together so that in their next life they were also destined to be together again.  These theories and stories have shaped the basis for how I view life and connections between myself and other humans and/or non-humans. In my work these entanglements also stem from two words 운명–fate–and 정–a deep rooted sense of connection and bonds. My work tends to be surrounded by these themes of inevitable entanglements, whether it’s by using the physical threads,weavings, and knots to show it representationally or much more abstracted.

Fragments of

I am interested in the ways in which we create fragments of ourselves–sometimes leaving them elsewhere–and how those fragments leave empty spaces in ourselves only to be filled by ideas of nostalgia, sometimes grief, or longing. Fragments of is something that I find traverses all of my work. It is where all of the themes of my work intersect, these fragments are created by Longing for a place that no longer exists; where the fragments are left in that place, sometimes to be picked back up again when you are in the space in which that place’s spatio-temporal event occurred. The Inevitables occur in this overlap of Fragments of as a futility of fragmentation, the inevitability in which you are bound to fragment whether you want to or not. Our Entanglement is a similar overlap in which these entanglements in life–between two humans for example–leave fragments in the wake of their loss or over their distance through space. Fragments of is a through thread where I understand how all of my work is somehow connected. Though sometimes I view my work and projects in separate categories, or running parallel lines to each other, there always tends to be an underlying thread that is created from Fragments of. These are the Fragments of grief; Fragments of longing, Fragments of nostalgia, and Fragments of “x” . 

Materials and Materiality

Currently I am moving away from medium specificity in what I consider one of these Inevitables. As a ceramicist I believe that clay as a material is an extension of self and body–yet I am interested in how other materials also carry their own histories and their own “baggage”. My choice of materials is very specific and intentional, as I continue to expand the materials I am willing to work with I am also drawing hard lines with materials I am not willing to work with. For example I am not interested in using new non-natural materials such as resin or plastic within my work. However I am willing to use these and similar materials when they come from found objects, such as the choice to weave with otherwise discarded fishing nets. Though potentially a critique of the system that has allowed these environmentally detrimental materials to exist or continue to exist in the first place; I also believe these discarded objects/materials have intrinsic value and can be given a new life and meaning.

Last updated January 2026