Weight of Words
Sumi Lee
“The path depends on the walking, as the word depends on the speaking.”
(Translated from the Korean proverb “길은 갈 탓이요, 말은 할 탓이라”)
We live in an era where the weight of words is fading. We have moved past the generation that poured their hearts into each and every character of a letter, waiting weeks for a reply. Now, shielded by anonymity and the ease of "delete" and "edit" buttons online, we are losing sight of the gravity of words.
This shift in the digital realm affects our physical reality too. While a spoken word said out in the open can never be taken back, digital culture allows us to forget that fact. Speaking is instantaneous, but every word carries a weight far beyond the moment it is uttered.
Weight of Words aims to reclaim the forgotten weight and gravity of words. Whether a mundane daily remark, a word spoken aloud, or a word overheard, it explores the collective weight of words, and where and how we often leave them behind. Words were gathered from a collective of individuals with distinct experiences. Through the process of trace monoprint, where each character is physically pressed and etched into a paper surface, these words reclaim the tangible mass they have lost to the digital age. Accompanied by a video documenting this rhythmic, tactile creation, the final prints are suspended in a long, continuous trail along the wall, manifesting the cumulative gravity of our speech.