Artist Sungok Park draws cats, as it is known. Why cats? It is probably essential to ask when analyzing Sungok Park’s work. Surprisingly, however, it isn’t easy to find text about the cat among the many articles about the artist. Most articles focus on the detailed depiction of fur made by countless repetitions of drawing lines and develop the artistic theory that “drawing” is a “Buddhist practice” for the artist. The artist lives by helping monks in a temple in Busan, and such a background of the artist also adds to this analysis. The artist said, “I like the term ‘Zen meditation,’ a practice to see through one’s nature. Zen meditation can be done in many ways. To me, filling the paper with thin lines is like Zen meditation.” Such a comment guides us to look at it in the same context. Despite this clear, logical argument, this article about Sungok Park tries to start from a different point: the “cat,” which is the subject of the artist’s work. It is because this starting point is faithful to the basics of analyzing the artist’s work. However, it doesn’t mean that the article contradicts the previous criticism. This is because this article, which starts with cats, also leads to the formula “drawing = Buddhist practice” mentioned by previous researchers.

The reason cats are not mentioned in the articles about Sungok Park may be because of the artist’s background, but it is not necessarily just because of that. It is because there are some burdensome parts to link the existence of a cat, especially the ‘cute cat’ drawn by Sungok Park, to a serious art theory. As is generally known, art has been in pairs with various discourses representing the times. When countless people died due to the World War, art came out in line with existential philosophy. In the case of Korea, as soon as it was liberated, they seriously considered what Korea was, and works such as “Korean Abstract” and “Monochrome painting” were born at this time. Such discussion has continued until recently, leading to various experiments within the discourse of “post-colonialism.” Art, art theory, and criticism must have hindered the writers from analyzing “cats” due to the pressure that they must talk about serious theory, which is considered a certain class of form. It is because, no matter how hard you think, it is easier to title Sungok Park as an artist by her “practice” than by “cute cat.” However, is a cat really not enough for that? If you think about it carefully, it is not the case. In fact, we live life with cats. It does not apply only to the so-called ‘butlers at a cat’s house’ living with cats in their homes. Whether you have a cat in your house or not, you, who are reading this article right now, live with them. Think of the many street cats you meet while taking a walk. Think of the many images of cats you see through algorithms. As such, you live with the cats even if you don’t want to. As a result, various attempts are being made to capture the images of cats in broadcasts, news, and magazines, as well as movies, poems, and novels. Various studies dealing with cats have recently been published in the “philosophy” division, not ‘biology’ or “animal behavior.”

As such, the reason why the status of cats has changed this way is not just because we share life with them. Such an approach to cats is in line with the discussion of the “Anthropocene” and the post-humanism, which have recently been mentioned importantly. “Anthropocene is a concept first proposed by Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, which refers to the powerful influence of a single life that changes the entire planet of humanity.”^[2] In other words, the Earth has undergone several major geological changes, including the advent of the Ice Age and the separation of continents, with most natural disasters being a factor. Still, the Earth’s ecosystem is rapidly changing according to human behavior, and Crutzen proposes to call this period the Anthropocene. Such discussion of the Anthropocene can be seen as a human response to the environmental crisis the Earth is facing. Therefore, this discussion naturally moves toward the ‘post-humanism’ that the owner of the Earth is not only human but also other animals and plants. The Anthropocene has yet to be a formal geological concept. However, its impact is significant, drawing a lot of consent and being dealt with in various fields. In particular, the achievements in the humanities and social sciences and the arts fields are noteworthy, and they are showing remarkable achievements in combination with feminism, especially eco-feminism. A representative theorist is Donna J. Haraway. She believes that animals related to humans can become kin by mutually influencing each other as actors in the process of coevolution with humans and also cultivating thoughts and imaginations about them. For this reason, she suggests abolishing the existing concept of ‘species’ that distinguishes people from animals and establishing the concept of ‘companion species.’^[3]She argues that a new symbiosis network should be created by combining nature, such as animals and plants, into human society.^[4]

Let’s go back to Sungok Park. Sungok Park draws the cats. However, all the cats the artist draws do not feel like they are any species different from humans. In her work, humans and cats are drawn more closely than any other human relationship. For example, let’s look at the works “Self-Portrait” (2023) and “Projection” (2022). These works describe a girl and a cat as one being. “Friends in May” (2023) and “Girls Together” (2023), in which a girl and a cat communicate with each other in equal relationships, evoke the same idea. The anthropomorphic cats in the painting can be seen in the same context, as can be seen in “Kukkukkuk” (2023), which depicts an image that looks like a cat massaging a girl, and “You Who Wants to Fly, Me Becoming a Cloud” (2023), which depicts a girl supporting a cat with both hands for it which wants to fly, show the appearance of caring for each other, literally meaning the “companionship.” This kind of artwork can be done because the artist lives with her cats at home and the temple as companions. Also, it is possible because of the rather unique environment of working at a temple, the artist interacts with fewer people and spends more time with the cats. The artist once told an episode in which a cat lived with her in a temple, Haetal, made it awkward by killing pigeons or mice, and she had to educate the cat even though she couldn’t communicate with it. This is one of the examples of naturally applying the temple’s rules to a cat, non-human, and it suggests the environment around the artist who does not distinguish between humans and animals. It is also a case of how humans and cats make some kind of contract to live in a community. There is no hierarchy between humans and cats to Sungok Park. The way the artist describes the cats is also noteworthy. The artist said in a conversation, “I failed countless times until I could draw the cat right.” This statement came to me somewhat unfamiliar, as they do not often ask this question in the contemporary art field, which may be the most basic of art. To the artist, drawing a cat well is an expression that encompasses everything, such as the flexible movement of the cat, various facial expressions, and even their ecology, in addition to the detailed description of the fur that many people pay attention to. This may be why Sungok Park’s cat looks particularly prominent among many cat images worldwide. It is the point that the artist treats cats as relatives and does not objectify them.

As known, Sungok Park doesn’t only draw cats. The exhibition “Comfort” (2009) held in the cafe “AT GALLERY,” which was the artist’s debut in the art world, contained colorful flowers and a girl, and later captured invisible monsters intervening in human life on the canvas through the “INVISIBLE LITTLE MONSTER” (2014). The series produced later also described a “girl who grew up without losing her heart” behind the surreal background and did not draw the cats. Sometimes, a cat appeared in the painting but only stayed in the background. Back then, “snakes” appeared more often than the “cats” on her screen. It was relatively recently that the cat began to be brought to the foreground as it is now. At that time, the fur depiction through countless repetitive line drawings began. Many assumptions about the artist’s change can be made, but I believe this process came out while emptying out. During this period, the artist said, “I feel like I am emptying out toward nothingness rather than putting in my thoughts when I paint. I sometimes get confused about why I try so hard to go for nothingness, but what is certain is that when I paint, I lose all my meaningless thoughts and feel refreshed.”^[5] Focusing on the object, repetitively drawing as if meditating and erasing decorative screens, finding objects to draw around her rather than looking for them from afar, it would all have been “emptying out.” Unlike previous small drawings, the artist releases works that fill large canvases by drawing huge cats with tightly drawn black lines. The work has grown bigger, but the contents have been simplified. It can also be considered an extension of emptying out.

Sungok Park is shy about calling herself an artist and says she is in the process of becoming an artist. She may be saying this out of modesty, but after talking with her, I realized that she was actually thinking that way and that it also resembles the artist. It is because, like the question of how to draw well, it is natural for an artist to question what an artist is. Sungok Park majored in photography, not in painting. Now that she has come from outside the fine arts field, she may ask more essential questions. In addition, the artist does not talk about the Anthropocene in her own words. I did not ask, but maybe she is unaware of this issue. The “honeybee,” which is disappearing around us due to the deterioration of the ecosystem, appears with a cat on her screen, but she doesn’t mention that she drew it for it. She could try to be cool and make some arguments, but the artist does not. Is it because of this attitude of life? She does not objectify art or discussion of the Anthropocene, just like she does not objectify cats. She simply works on artwork or lives her life, doing small practices one by one. Any work is bound to resemble an artist. However, sometimes I see artists who do not. Sungok Park, however, resembles her work. The artist and the work closely resemble each other.

^[1] Seunghan Paek, 「Images of Animals: Reading Cat as Other Minds, Object and Representation」, 『 Journal of History of Modern Art』 20223, Vol., No. 53, Korea Association for History of Modern Art, 2023, p.178

^[2] Hyowon Shim, 「Anthropocene and 21st Century Interdisciplinary Approaches」, 『Comparative Literature 』2023, Vol., No. 80, The Korea Comparative Literature Association, p.238

^[3]Nam Sook Hyun, 「Donna Haraway’s Multispecies Ecopolitics: Focused on ‘Becoming-with’ and ‘Response-ability’」, 『 Korean Feminist Philosophy 』 2021, vol.35, Korean Association Of Feminist Philosophers, p. 89

^[4] Many journals are being published on this, and Yonsei University’s recent study on new social networks in the era of “New-Normal,” “Exploring the Uniqueness of Posthuman Social Networks: Making SF of Human-Cat Village Revealed in the Movie “Cats’ Apartment” (2023)”, is particularly noteworthy. This writing discusses the relationship between the apartment that will be demolished due to redevelopment and the human-cat that lived together in it.

^[5] From the artist note, 2021

Lee Boseong (Art Critic)