KO, Ki Young

Ko, Ki Young is a lighting designer who has worked on the spatial projects of time by using the four-dimensional light
in the sphere of the three-dimensional space. After graduating from Ewha Womans University and the graduate school of her alma mater majoring in space and environmental design, she studied architectural lighting design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She has worked on projects for the National Museum of Korea (Seoul), Seoul Square, Gyeongbokgung Palace (Seoul), Changdeokgung Palace (Seoul), Seosomun Shrine History Museum (Seoul), Busan Opera House, Gwangan Bridge (Busan), Busan Harbor Bridge, the Cathedral at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang (Hwaseong), Causeway Bridge (Kuwait), Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea, PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games Gangneung Installation among others. She participated in the art exhibitions such as Club Monster (Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, 2016-2017), A Library in My Mind (Kyobo Art Space, Seoul, 2016), and the public art project Moonlight Nodeul (Nodeulseom Island, Seoul, 2021). She also completed the space for contemplation at the foyer of Seolhaeone (Yangyang) with the theme of “the lake of light” through utilizing images and lighting

A scene at midday may be the existence of a mirage. It disappears without light. Thus, light exists like air within daily scenes which have been created by architecture that has established human life through the source of nature.
When the night falls, the Asia Culture Center turns to another place. Theodor W. Adorno said that beauty without historical memory could not exist, and the past with cultural senses enhances the freedom of humans and frees us.
I intended to walk through the emerald light forest with a greenish dream in mythologies when so many memories are about to disappear by being buried in a darkened silence. I wanted to dream of another form of freedom, happy with the new stories in a vanished landscape after the fearful cry of COVID-19 under a hot sun at noon.
When darkness falls, and the light rises over a cold Cooling Tower without any warmth, a new story begins. The properties of matter that appear and disappear along with the texture of light play delightful music with light and present a song to the world. Once a happy virus starts dancing towards the world, the dull and monotonous tower turns to a living creature in an instant and serves as a source for life that expresses the circulation of air consisting of clean and clear particulars.
Green lights sprinkled on the stairs become happy viruses, flow to the fantasy forest, and let us thoroughly enjoy the fresh freedom. The flow of the minutiae of a floating light is delivered to the lower side of the Grand Canopy,emphasizing the connectivity of the entire space and the recognition of the entrance with the united lighting of the Sensory Garden.
The trees, standing along the wooden stairs, plan to change clothes as their greenery deepens, but they vanish into the air and disappear when the night falls. The green light provides the forest trees with new life fitting the night scene, and each of them delightfully starts telling a story about the world. Peace and comfort from such greenish wonder and the image of nature and harmony alleviate the psychological stress and calmly remind us of our past memories and create new ones. This place where the past and the future coexist embraces and cures the painful reality of COVID-19 with the most mysterious emerald light.
On any given autumn day in 2021, when “night falls, light fulls,” this place will turn to be a beautiful landscape that plays painful memories in the pursuit of new freedom.