To Jihye Kim (KR) working with clay is writing with clay. Clay is her language and mother tongue.
She explains that clay is traditionally one of the oldest writing materials, clay tablets with scriptures from the ancient Middle East have been found in early excavations. In The Letter of Love, she explores the process of making and writing, by hand-building and revealing the traces of her hands. The handmade patterns form her alphabet, the column itself the chapter. Kim chose the shape of a column to refer to the nonfunctional and archaeological history of clay. In her second project, Kim explored digital techniques in relation to writing. Not long ago, we would mostly write by hand, nowadays we mostly write digitally. Kim solidified the trace of her hand squeezing a small piece of clay, which was then 3D scanned and turned into a smaller and a larger mold.