I had the pleasure of exhibiting my artwork for the Box Gallery. My artwork is inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1: No Poverty—and is also inspired by box gallerys mission and goals itself which is to raise and awareness and help these elderly individuals in South Korea dragging huge carts of recyclable cardboard, just to earn a few dollars a day.
Everyone who participated in the Box Gallery built their canvases from the recycled cardboard that we bought from these elderly for 3 times the market price. But for me, I wanted to go further, which is why I chose to make the cardboard collectors themselves the subject of my piece.
I filled the canvas with large, detailed palms of elderly hands and engraved them with wrinkles, creases, and textures to capture the weight of a lifetime of labor and reflect the burdens they carry and all the work they've toiled through. In the center, I painted a small grandmother straining to pull her cart forward with her back hunched face looking down and cardboard falling out of her cart. I wanted her to feel both fragile and strong, surrounded by the very hands that built the life she continues to work through. And this tension between these strength and vulnerability was something that I tried to highlight in my painting.
My hope is that this piece helps us reflect not just on the material we used, but on the people whose labor made it possible, and it invites us to really visit and think about the human stories behind poverty and the broader issue of elderly poverty itself that we often overlook.
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