« The Butterfly’s Dream » by the artist Seulgi Lee

My name is Seulgi. 

For several years I have been collaborating with exceptional craftsmen. In an intuitive way, I try to translate the link between the practice of craftsmanship and our language system.

I would like to tell you about my U-blanket project, a Korean quilt from Tongyeong, which I have been working on since 2014 in collaboration with the Nubi artisans.

I was interested in those precise moments when one is about to fall asleep and when one starts to wake up under the blanket. I took a Korean Nubi blanket model, and instead of the traditional motif, I tried to construct a geometric composition to hide a proverb. It is very exciting to imagine that this collective story can influence the sleep of the sleeper. For example, frog in a well is a very common expression in Korea meaning narrow minded. As the frog is jumping up and down, its body is sewn vertically, while the wells of the blanket that oppress it are sewn horizontally. The cotton-filled silk is painstakingly stitched line by line every half centimetre. 

From the beginning I was also curious about the origin of the colours, which would be related to the elements and their orientation.