QUEEN OF MY CASTLE

Mix media on canvas. 90 X 120 cms. 2024 Collection: BEFORE THE SHARD. Relic No. BTS-V.O5 Energetic Function: Stabilization of sovereign perception in liminal terrain. Symbolic Role: The enthronement of the self as the only credible authority. There is a silence here that doesn’t ask to be understood. It isn’t theatrical. It doesn’t reach for reverence. It simply is. Queen of My Castle does not perform sovereignty it occupies it. The structure on the right is not a throne, and yet it functions as one. It’s too elegant to be scaffolding, too ceremonial to be shelter. A sovereign object, unclaimed by history. And the figure? Not central, not obscured. She stands within the scene like punctuation anchoring meaning without explaining it. I’ve seen countless attempts to render “feminine power.” Most collapse into costume, performance, iconography. But this relic avoids all of that. It whispers something much older. In studies of spatial-perceptual interference, this relic exhibited a rare effect: viewers consistently registered a feeling of “correct placement” without being able to describe what was placed, or where. This suggests that the work bypasses language and enters the visual cortex as a regulation structure, subtly enforcing affective coherence without emotional appeal. The result is not catharsis but a kind of identity interruption. Viewers do not interpret they submit. The brown terrain is a kind of psychic residue, almost geological in its memory. The white and blue form pierces it not to conquer, but to crystallize. This isn’t emergence. It’s return. I don’t know who the queen is. But I know the castle belongs to her. And I suspect it always did. CURATORIAL COMMENTARY by Dong-hyun Yoon Archive for Trans-Contextual Inquiry, ATI Seoul/Berlin.