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Minji An
비밀암호 : Secret Code (after Alighiero Boetti)
Blue ink on paper
5 pieces, 21×29,7cm each
Drawing
2023

비밀암호 : Secret Code (After Alighiero Boetti) is a work thought as an homage to Alighiero Boetti’s alphabet series realized with blue ballpoint onpaper.

The work is composed by 5 handmade drawings seen as compositions in which drawn lines and drawn words coexist, transforming into each other and focusing on secret codes and language connected to the artist’s native language: Korean.

Language barriers exist for everyone.
Every time we read or listen to a new language/alphabet, words lose their meaning resounding like a song and letters appear on the page as drawings. A common experience for the artist, when exercising her language abroad and vice-versa.

Interested in the loss of meaning and the secret that an alphabet of signs could unveil, the artist composes her work beginning by listing the Korean alphabet and then composing a hidden message while listening to Korean news.

The outcome presented in the final drawing is the secret message derived from the world’s news transformed into a new rearranged sign in which the practice of writing words and drawing lines merge into each other.