33rd GapperLee Chan-ju
An 11-month gap year
Art That Blossomed from Day Labor
# School Life and the Never-Ending Part-Time Jobs
In my first year, my parents paid my tuition, but when my twin younger siblings became university students, tuition had to be covered by student loans and I had to earn allowance and living expenses through part-time work. Even though I worked part-time, I earned only around 800,000 won per month. After paying rent, student loan repayments, and various living expenses, my bank balance was always precarious.
I became exhausted from repeatedly juggling post-military school life and working to earn living expenses, and in situations that were neither one thing nor the other, difficult times kept recurring.As a result, I naturally ended up taking a leave of absence after military discharge, taking a leave during my third year, and postponing graduate school after graduating in my fourth year.
To become an artist, one must work continuously, but to earn money for materials, studio rent, student loan payments, and other living expenses, I had to work and needed more money. There was even a time when my younger sibling from the same department and a few friends rented a basement in a building as both a room and a studio because we had nowhere else to stay; before that, we wandered from seniors' studios to school workshops carrying only a single suitcase.
At that time, I had this thought.'Ah, because I have no money, I feel self-conscious wherever I go and can't hold my head high. I need money. I have to earn money to be able to do art.'Even now, I have colleagues around me in the same situation. Many can't endure it and give up art. So I abruptly stopped my studies and started working.
# Manual labor, and the contemptuous gaze of people
I took a leave of absence and, along with seniors and friends, traveled around the metropolitan area and provinces doing many jobs. I worked as an artist's assistant, in interior construction, making/installing sculptures and wooden playgrounds, making props for TV and film, furniture making, and various other jobs. Through that I gained a bit of skill, and if I had the materials and tools I could imitate things to some extent. Of course the work was hard, but looking back I learned a lot and it was rewarding.
After graduating, based on the skills I had learned, I mainly did work related to my major, handling tools and making things, but I mostly did physical labor. Sitting still and wrestling with documents or a computer didn't suit me and felt boring.And for 'manual labor', you can work on weekends and the hourly pay is relatively high compared to other jobs, so I started without hesitation.I started doing it.
I once went to a labor office near Moran Market at 4 a.m., and many of the men arrived much earlier than me. I was a part-timer, but for them this was their livelihood, so I, being a beginner and a student, kept getting pushed to the back and even if a day ended up being wasted I wasn't angry. We would ride a van to construction sites whose locations we didn't even know, building apartments and erecting buildings.
Then one day, wearing work clothes and safety boots, I took the subway at Moran Station to go home, and people around me looked at me as if extremely uncomfortable and avoided me.Looking back, I wasn't that dirty, but I felt their contempt as if to say 'They haven't learned anything and are lazy, so they do such manual labor.'
But the laborers are extremely diligent. The office opens at 4 a.m., but they are out waiting before that, and they have strong conviction and pride in their work. In other countries these people are acknowledged and respected, but our society's ignoring them made me angry.
"No matter how small and grease-stained a part is, if that one part is missing the whole machine won't run."
# If I want to earn and save as much money as I want, where would it end?
Then, an older guy I shared a studio with, after several years of preparation, opened a rice cake shop in the market. We decided to earn money together so we could do art, to stop being hungry, so we worked together starting from opening the rice cake shop. After working for about half a year, at some point I became mentally and physically exhausted and felt a sense of doubt.'Either way, no matter what work I do it seemed endless to earn and save as much money as I wanted, and then art would be forever out of reach. If I get married and have children, my dream will drift away. Will I really be happy then?'That thought came to me. The time called 'later' might never come and seemed uncertain. My younger sibling, who is in the same school and department, and my colleagues around me all told me the same.After much deliberation, I mustered the courage to return to art and came to graduate school to major in sculpture again.
Even after coming to graduate school, I briefly worked part-time selling and delivering at a used appliances and furniture store where I had worked before. We bought refrigerators and washing machines from a building and carried them out, and the building manager came out, scolded us saying it was noisy and that we were scratching the floor, and finally said, "You must be uneducated to do work like that." Again, hearing that tone of contempt for doing this kind of work, I replied, "Yes, I'm uneducated — I graduated from a four-year college and I'm in grad school, and I'm doing this to earn living expenses. Which university and graduate school did you attend?" He went back in saying, "Damn, what a jerk."Being often looked down on for doing physical labor made me want to break people's prejudices about occupations.
# Labor skills learned from day labor, reborn as art
So I built a structure out of discarded waste materials from the construction site, just like the day laborers do. I erected a frame with plywood and rebar and applied a rough cement coating ('gongguri').I started making the 'Construction Site' series by going around construction sites and collecting discarded plywood, studs, rebar, and so on.I did.
For example, there's , a work created evoking a deposit of 300 and a monthly rent of 30. It's obviously a cheap rooftop room; I thought, if I actually live like this, will I ever have my own home? Will I be able to own a car? Will I even get married? I made it while thinking about those questions. I tried to capture the stories of young people like me who give up many things — dating, getting a job, a car, marriage — and last October I was able to hold an exhibition called 'Youth, Hot Air Balloons Rising at Night' for teenagers and young adults.
And the goal for the 'Construction Site' series made like this is to hold street exhibitions where the manpower agencies are gathered. Even as a part-timer, I felt very empty when I went to agencies and left empty-handed — I wonder how the older workers feel. So I want to show it to those who couldn't go to the sites right there on the street.
Then the workers would say something like this.
"That's not how you apply gongguri. Why did you build it so shoddily? I could do much better than this."
At that moment I would like to tell the workers this.
"Right? I used the day labor skills I learned from you to make this crude piece, and people call it art. The buildings you build are praised as works of art, so your work is the work of artists no less impressive than anyone else's."
# A gap year different from others, so I gained more special experiences
Through my unique time doing day labor, I gained experiences that became material for making works and acquired skills you can't learn just anywhere. I make pieces based on materials and techniques I learned at construction sites or furniture shops. So when my friends and I set up a studio, we were able to install partition walls, do cement work, plumbing, and electrical work ourselves. And it may sound like a clichéd perfect answer, but seeing people who live diligently and work hard made me feel that I should also live earnestly without shame. Really.There are many things you can learn at school, but there are also many you can't. I learned those. Things I only knew in my head. No matter how much you read or hear about them, they don't compare to experiencing and feeling them firsthand.
AndBy pausing my work and going through various experiences, I realized again what I truly wanted to do. I reset the direction I needed to take and returned to my original place able to work even harder.And that led to some good things personally. My finances are still tight and difficult, but I'm joyful and happy because I'm doing the work I've wanted to do since I was young. Through works that come from my own experiences and feelings, I can convey many stories to people and move their hearts.
# To young people who want a gap year: "Go for it!"
When seniors and juniors asked similar questions, I always gave the same answer: 'If you plan half-heartedly you'll only waste time. Plan well.' But these days that has changed.'Go for it. Even if you think you've ruined it right away, doing it and regretting it is different from not trying and living with only regrets. But it's your life, so the choice and responsibility are yours. How those times feel afterwards depends on your attitude — and what comes after does too.'I still think and say this.
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