Panel eleven - Selected by Minjoo LEE

When we look into the boy's eyes, his deep emotions flow out and make an emotional connection with us. This artwork is “Purple Lilac” by KOBAYASHI Shiori. In a quiet, dark city, a boy standing on a bridge is surrounded by purple lilacs. The actual place of the postcard is Nerima-ku, Tokyo, and the building behind it has illuminations of heart shapes at night.

In actuality, there is a girl in front of the boy. They were just friends, but as the boy's  emotion changed, their relationship also grew. The lilac has the meaning of  friendship. Among them, purple lilac means first love, which can be interpreted as  changes in relationships between men and women. It is a symbolic expression that  the heart of the boy, who is the main figure in this painting, has grown beyond friendship with his first love.

The boy is confused and anxious by this strange feeling that is different from what he has ever felt. But his cheeks also turned red with the loveliness he felt while  looking at her. Through this artwork, we can see the pure love of youth and recall  precious memories that we may have forgotten.

A man and a woman, half human, half beast are situated in a surreal space. The title of this postcard is “What Do You Know?”  This artwork has contradictions where unmatched beings gather to create harmony. Jellyfish from the sea float in the air, heterogeneous beings with both the body of an animal and the shape of a human stand in a frame. The existence of uncommon objects is unfamiliar, but it stimulates strange curiosity at the same time. And it makes the audience imagine how these things can be connected and result in one artwork.

“What Do You Know?” represents the gap between memory and actuality. The two central man and woman were the grandparents of the artist, and the work was created based on photographs from 1952. The artist questioned his memory connected to them and expressed this distinction making unrealistic spaces. Ultimately, this artwork tries to ask the audience a question, “Is everything you remember accurate?” It tells us our memories can sometimes be misleading and fantastical.