Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi
April 16 to April 23, 2024
Video Diary _ People on Saturday _ March 30th, 2024
April 9 to April 16, 2024
Video Diary _ Flying a Kite _ March 17th, 2024
March 12 to March 19, 2024
Diary Drawing _ No. 8920_ February 3th, 2024
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil on paper
February 13 to February 20, 2024
Diary Drawing _ No. 8662_ March 27th, 2023
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil on paper
/ Homage to Cindy Sherman
January 30 to February 2, 2024
Diary Drawing _ No. 8897_ January 1th, 2024
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil and pencil on paper
November 28 to December 5, 2023
Video diary _ Rote Flora, 21 November 2023
October 31 to November 7, 2023
Diary Drawing _ No. 8657_ March 16th, 2023 Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil and pencil on paper
October 24 to October 31, 2023
Diary Drawing _ No. 8606_ December 8th, 2022
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil and lacquer on paper
October 11 to October 17, 2023
Video diary _ Around the light, 5 September 2023
July 11 to July 18, 2023
“there and away” 21 x 29,7cm, pencil on paper, 2022
July 4 to July 11, 2023
Video diary _ Thunderbolt, 21 June 2023
June 27 to July 4, 2023
Diary Drawing _ No. 8676_ April 15th, 2023 Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil on paper
June 20 to June 27, 2023
Diary Drawing _ No. 8672_ April 8th, 2023, Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil on paper
May 30 to June 6, 2023
May 23 to May 30, 2023
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil on paper
When a first day of the week comes:
A headscarf will give birth to an anaconda whose name is Monday. She will bring woman and freedom »
May 9 to May 16, 2023
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, charcoal and oil on paper
The diary drawing (No. 8647_24.2.2023) was created when the war of aggression in Ukraine became one year. On the day, 24.Feb. 2023, my thought was in solidarity somewhere in Ukraine, where I actually physically had not been yet. On the Internet I found a photo of a man driving through a bombed ghost town in Ukraine. He survived. I drew this motive on the sheet and kept it. Today I wish him to stay alive.
May 2 to May 9, 2023
April 25 to May 2, 2023
April 11 to April 18, 2023
April 4 to April 11, 2023
March 28 to April 4, 2023
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil on paper
March 21 to March 28, 2023
February 28 to March 7
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, oil and gold lacquer on paper
February 7 to February 14
Size: 21 x 29,7cm, pencil on paper
January 31 to February 7
Size: 21 x 29,7 cm, typewriter letters, Tipp Ex and watercolor on paper
November 22 to November 29
11.11.2022 Friday sunny 23:23
Mahsa Jina Amini
burst into tears while presenting her work as she read aloud her own text to go with her drawings. She interrupted the reading aloud. Everyone was silent in the classroom while she wiped the tear with her bare hand and repeated « sorry I’m crying ».
Elisa, fellow student, sat next to her and tried to help her to read her text for her. Her voice also wavered from excitement as Mahsa did when reading aloud. Soon she stopped. In a bumpy wet voice, she said to everyone, « Sorry, I can’t either. » There remained the collective wordlessness in the room. The silence among us.
Only the helpless sympathy. The buzzing engine noise from the beamer. I had to strive to break the oppressive silence so that others would not cry. I got up from the chair, went to Mahsa. I handed her a handkerchief.
Two images projected on the wall by the beamer were faithfully there in the bright light where they were. They were two pencil drawings. On the left, a carefully drawn men’s jacket; on the right, a small knotted women’s scarf with lots of dots.
Meanwhile Mahsa calmed down, broke the silence and turned to us,
« it is a jacket of my father. I took it with me when I left Iran.
When I miss him, I wear it and feel like he is with me. It smelled like him. But it’s been seven years. The jacket doesn’t smell like him the way it used to. It’s been 7 years since I’ve seen my father. I don’t know if I will even see him again ».
« ……………. . . . . . . . »
After the long pause, she continued speaking,
« it’s a worn scarf from my girlfriend. She gave it to me when I left the country. Now she is in prison. I don’t know how she is. I don’t know if she’s even alive. How it is happening in Iran right now…. ».
She fell silent with the last sentence.
Mahsa is a student from Tehran. She wears her curly black hair loose.
March 16 2022
Natalia and Sergey
Yesterday we rang the bell at the guest apartment where they have found a place to live with our construction community for the past week. Natalia opened the apartment door and faced us. We met for the first time. Wordlessly, we handed her a bag of wheat flour. After handing it to her, we ran the text translated into Ukrainian in the audio from the cell phone. Because we can’t speak Ukrainian or Russian, we prepared in google translator for it, so that we can communicate with Natalia and Sergey why we visited them. The artificial machine voice from the cell phone was running:
This is Kyung-hwa from Korea and Niko from Greece. We heard that you need the wheat flour and sunflower oil. Here is wheat flour. Tomorrow we will bring you sunflower oil.
Silently she was. Her look at us was such that I cannot make an apt description of it here. Simply written, very touched. Short and to the point, she said « Thank you! ». I assume that DANKE (Thank you) may be the first learned German word she has uttered since arriving in Germany. Mutually, we immediately had unconditional trust and full of compassion, although we did not know each other at all.
This afternoon the doorbell rang. When Niko opened the door, Sergey was standing in front of the apartment door. He brought us homemade fresh pancakes with vanilla sugar. Although Sergej didn’t speak a word, Niko understood what the smell of vanilla butter said. The two stood across from each other closer than a meter, Corona forgotten, and laughed together, the war forgotten.
Wheat meal and sunflower oil
Natalia and Sergey went to the supermarket to buy groceries. Almost everything they needed they found at the discount store. Wheat flour and sunflower oil they did not find anywhere. Everywhere the shelves were empty where they should be. They were all.
Since the Ukraine war, the price of wheat has risen massively. Ukraine and Russia are major exporters on the international wheat market. A good quarter of the world’s exports of sunflower oil also come from Ukraine and Russia.
Natalia and Sergey from Kharkiv, who would have to flee to Hamburg because of the Russian attack, could not buy their staple food, wheat flour and sunflower oil, on all discounters ALDL, LIDL, REWE in Altona on the day…, both because of broken supply chains, and because of hoarding purchases. On the day they could not fry Wareniki in sunflower oil. Thus, the long-fingered Putin and his cronies reached not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe, indeed, all over the world.
Today in the news it was reported about how a farmer from Zaporizhzhya drove his tractor to his field just in the war. He had the bullet-proof vest and helmet on his head. In a few days Niko visited them without an appointment. They suffer not only from the « it’s not so easy to get wheat flour and sunflower oil », but also from the loneliness here in New-at-home. They speak Ukrainian and Russian but no English. The just-so chatter is missing for the two of them. Niko wanted them all to talk to each other using their cell phones, or more precisely Google Translator with the audio-visual function. They spent one afternoon talking to each other thanks to Google Translator. Natalia and Sergey were even much better at using it. While Niko slowly typed the sentences with one finger, the two quickly pronounced in Ukrainian on the microphone. Automatically, the pronounced sentences appeared in German in Display.
Natalia shows the images from a Ukrainian news channel, its logo « TPYXA » in Cyrillic appears at the bottom of the display of a burning prefabricated building in Kharkiv. The news anchor talks about the war and on the display appears « Nobody expects. » Or « We don’t understand. Why is this? »…. Natalia would also like to see if her own apartment in Kharkiv is still standing and if so, whether it is damaged. So far she could not tell from the TV pictures if her apartment building was bombed or with luck, survived it until now. Her fear and agony is clearly readable in her eyes.
Niko: « Next summer the war will be over. You will be back home by then. (His statement amuses Natalia and Sergey). Then I will visit you and please reserve a room in a hotel, for me in Kharkiv« . (The two smiled).
Natalia and Sergey: « No, then you stay with us, not in a hotel ». (Quickly Natalia’s mood darkens)« .
Natalia: « But if my house is still standing. Maybe it’s already gone. Maybe everything is broken ».
Niko: « If the house is broken, I’ll visit you with a drill and tools, then we’ll fix it (The two hugged Niko and laughed heartily all three of them together. They shed Corona)« .
Written by Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi, April 3, 2022
Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi 경화 초이-아호이 , real name Kyung-hwa Choi , 최경화 ; born 1967 in Seoul ) is a south korean artist, author and unniversity lecturer living in Germany . From 2015 to 2019 she was a professor of drawing at the University of the Arts Bremen and has been a professor of drawing at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee since 2019 .