This research proposes that care—specifically domestic and parental labour—becomes perceptible through artistic practice. Moving beyond a purely theoretical construct, it positions care as a materially grounded, relational structure operating through repetition, pressure, and sustained bodily engagement. In this framework, care functions simultaneously as the subject, mode, and condition of the work.
Developed within the diasporic experience of fragmented time and the persistent lag of caregiving, the research unfolds through three interconnected bodies of work: Everything Matters (painting), Weaving the Unseen (textile), and The Silent Gravity (bronze sculpture). Across these series, care is revealed through material translation: domestic residues are transmuted into paintings; gesture drawings become hand-sewn textile bodies that record the rhythm of interrupted labour; and these forms are further reconfigured through 3D scanning and bronze casting.
A central contribution is the articulation of digital processes as transitional stages rather than neutral tools. Through 3D scanning and printing, embodied labour—initially formed via touch—is displaced and re-situated. This allows gestures of care to persist across material states, culminating in bronze works that condense the endurance of the Korean affect of han—approached here as a durational enactment of sustained responsibility—into structural weight. Simultaneously, informed by mycelial structures, the research understands care as an adaptive, distributed practice that reconfigures itself through relational proximity and interdependence in contrast to centralized control.
Consequently, care emerges through material and spatial relations—as an entangled field produced through the interweaving of the three bodies of work. By shifting the focus from theoretical discourse to structure and from conceptualization to material embodiment, this study repositions artistic practice as a site where invisible, silent maintenance becomes materially legible. The work remains an ongoing inquiry into the evolving relations between bodies, materials, and lived conditions.

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