Palimpsest derives from the ancient Greek naíunotos (palimpsēstos), meaning “scraped again”. It refers to medieval parchment manuscripts that were repeatedly scraped clean and rewritten. Palimpsest is the carrier that inscribes our identities—we are all texts repeatedly written upon parchment, each border crossing another overwriting, yet never

truly erasing the traces of origin. 

 

Juna dissects the trauma and possibilities of cross-cultural existence with incisive lines. Between Korea and England, she has experienced the repeated scraping away and rewriting of identity-mother tongue overlaid by English, Eastern concepts of death overwritten by Western quotidian. The multiple nude figures in her work are not formal ex-

Experiments but authentic portraits of immigrant identity: you are simultaneously multiple versions of yourself, each real, none complete.

 

Seohyun perceives the world as a continuous vibration of migratory experience. Her paintings capture the fluid state of cultural identity: landscapes disintegrate and reconstitute at the molecular level, mirroring how the immigrant self perpetually dissolves and

reconstructs between old and new cultures. Each layer of paint becomes a cultural overwriting, yet the underlying memories persistently tremor through the surface. This is the visualization of contemporary diasporic experience—you can never fully become “local”, nor can you return to a “pure” homeland. 

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Both artists choose to reveal the palimpsest nature of existence, making visible the truth of migration: not replacement but layering. Not translation but untranslatability. Their work refuses the burden that immigrants must choose. In its place: both/and. 

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All versions coexist. Each trace carries its predecessor, every image acknowledges its own instability