Different Versions of Myself
Dutch & Korean
“I’m Naomi He-Ji.
I’m Korean and Dutch with a Korean mother and Dutch father. I was born in 1994 and I grew up in the Netherlands. I mostly work as a visual artist focusing on themes around identity and sexuality.”
Earlier this year, @naomiheji contacted me and we met for coffee in Gangnam. She is a glowing jewel of color and life; and an example of never judging a book by its cover, something I think we halfies innately feel on a regular basis.
When we met in Gangnam, Naomi was dressed in all pink
“Why do I always need to choose between these two worlds? And why do I constantly need to adapt to one or the other? With my self-portraits I started to look for the different parts in me by changing myself in different “versions” and archetypes. This had taught me a lot about stereotypes, prejudices but I also finally felt comfortable within myself. I understood that I don’t need to choose between one or the other. The asian or the Western. I get to have best of both worlds and I started to see it as a very good skill. During this journey I made a lot of different project which also led to a lot of reactions from other mixed asian/western people who agreed with my thoughts but who also said that there is such a lack of representation of mixed people. This is when I started to see the power of representation and that I didn’t grow up with any representation which I could relate to.”
“I’ve been raised bi-culturally my whole life. My scope of interest lies in identity, representation, femininity, and sexuality. I particularly like to look at these topics from a female European-Asian perspective. I often use photography, film or performances as a medium to deal with difficulties that cross my path. During my time in art school I started to make a lot of self portraits and went into a journey of discovering my identity. Being raised bi-culturally, the Korean and Western culture, I felt like I was split in half. My parents also divorced which made this division feel even bigger. I was struggling to feel comfortable with myself and had a lot of questions about my identity. Why were people always calling me cute or “asian” while in Korea I was always the “Western” girl?”
Follow Naomi He-ji to see more of her art