Weight of Life in a Plastic Bag

Ships from Japan.
In Weight of Life in a Plastic Bag, Kwon YoungJin offers a poignant meditation on fragility and containment. Suspended in stillness, a translucent plastic bag hangs delicately from a crimson thread held by a pale, almost ghostlike hand. Inside, a yellow parrot lies wrapped and motionless, its vibrant form softened beneath folds of synthetic transparency.
 
Painted in acrylgouache on linen canvas, the piece exemplifies Kwon YoungJin’s gift for restraint and metaphor. The red string—fine and tense—suggests the thin ties between presence and absence, memory and mourning. The parrot, a symbol of color, voice, and freedom, becomes a quiet emblem of stillness, captured in a gesture that is both tender and unsettling.
 
The contrast between the black void of the background and the floating, luminous forms intensifies the silence of the scene. It is unclear whether the hand is protecting or discarding; whether the bird is being offered or mourned. This ambiguity, central to Kwon’s work, invites a deeper emotional reading.
Weight of Life in a Plastic Bag is a poetic reflection on life held too tightly, on beauty restrained, and on the delicate burden of care.