by Lizzy Moon
Visual Artist, Teaching Artist
IG : mununa
email : [email protected]
Through the research of natural color, mununa explores the relationship between human life and the natural world. Her work begins with observing plants, collecting color, and preserving pigments, but extends beyond the study of color itself. Through these processes, she records time, attention, and the connections formed through living alongside nature. Working across pigments, paper, drawing, writing, and community engagement, she creates spaces where viewers can reflect on their own relationship with the natural world and rediscover what has always been present, yet often overlooked.
As a teaching artist, mununa has participated in international cultural exchange programs and leads workshops aligned with her artistic vision. Drawing from her overseas residency experiences, she fosters inclusivity and collective creativity through community-based art projects, emphasizing shared participation and connection.
"Through natural color, I discovered a relationship.”
The artist collects materials directly from nature and extracts color from them, preserving these colors in the form of pigments. However, her practice extends beyond the collection or representation of natural color. Through years of researching natural pigments, she discovered something more significant than color itself: a relationship. Her work explores the connection between herself and the natural world, as well as the time spent in close observation of it.
The colors derived from flowers, leaves, and fruits are not only colors found in nature. They are traces of lived experiences, carrying memories, sensations, and moments accumulated through attentive engagement with the environment. While her practice began in her hometown of Busan, South Korea, and has expanded across diverse landscapes around the world, its core remains unchanged. Through observation, writing, drawing, and community engagement, she documents the evolving relationship between people, place, and nature.
The pigments she creates are more than material outcomes. They are small records of specific seasons, locations, memories, and encounters. Together, they form chromatic archives that reveal the interconnected histories of humans and the natural world.
For the artist, researching natural color is not simply a search for new hues. It is a process of rediscovering a relationship with nature, something that is always present yet often overlooked. The colors preserved as pigments, along with those absorbed into paper, become traces of time spent with nature, preserving fragments of attention, memory, and connection.
*<mununa. Pigments : Red beat. 2024>*