There are two passageways at Gwanghwamun subway station: one in the direction of the Kyobo Building and the other in the direction of Dong-A Ilbo, which is a newspaper company. These corridors connect the newly constructed subway station to existing underground passages. Lots of people pass through this underpass. On the walls are 365 artworks: photos of people silkscreened onto acrylic boards measuring 14 centimeters square, each with related stories about their subjects. Of the 365 people, 182 are very famous historical figures, while the remaining 183 are those that have been excluded, disregarded, overlooked, and forgotten. History is remembered through the stories of the famous, but it is really the unremembered and ordinary people who make history. I think their lives and their stories are the real basis of history. The people who work at subway stations, the people who pass through them, and the people who sell things there are more important to me, so I collected their photos and stories and arranged them alongside those of famous people. I wove the fabric of my work using their stories as lines of longitude and latitude, so they might yield a meaningful context for viewers to read. I intend for this work to be continued for fifty years, one hundred years, or more. The two Korean words “history” and “station” are homonyms: they have the same sound but different meanings. The word is pronounced “yeoksa.”
