What Remains

What Remains is built entirely on surrender. Rather than deciding the shape hanji would take beforehand, I set only the conditions and let the material determine what stays and what disappears. A single black square emerges from a repeated process: hand-grinding ink to darken the wooden panel, layering hanji across its surface, then pouring shellac and scraping it back, over and over. Some areas of hanji soak through completely and fuse permanently with the panel beneath; others never bond and eventually fall away, leaving bare panel exposed.

I did not predetermine which areas would hold and which would release. On the right side of the panel, hanji layered up in a way I did not plan, creating a slight physical ridge where one sheet rests on another, a small trace of accumulation within an otherwise flat, absorbed surface. I think of this piece as a study in what we cannot control about memory: what we try hardest to hold onto often fades regardless, while what we barely notice sometimes remains fixed in place.