Self-Portrait series — primary work

A copper-plate etching from Park's ongoing self-portrait series, this work uses intaglio's capacity for fine line and tonal aquatint to render the artist's own face — a recurring subject through which she examines her position as a third-generation Zainichi Korean born in Tokyo and raised in Gyeonggi. Self-portraiture in Park's practice is rarely straightforward likeness; the etched line carries the slow, accretive quality of memory, and the plate tone often holds the figure within a shallow, contemplative ground rather than placing it against blank paper. Compositionally, works in this series tend to crop tightly to the head and shoulders, with hard-ground line describing the contours of the face and aquatint shading the surrounding atmosphere. The piece sits alongside her graduation project portrait of her grandmother as part of a broader investigation, conducted at Musashino Art University, into how the Zainichi experience — the bilingual upbringing, the movement between Korea and Japan — registers on the body and the face. Etching's incremental, reversible process suits this subject: identity built up through repeated bites of the acid.