Today we’d like to introduce you to Cathrine Ji
Hi Cathrine, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born in Seoul, Korea, and lived there until I was almost twelve. We immigrated to the US at my grandfather’s invitation. He was a doctor of Eastern medicine, who received his training in Japan, where he married my grandmother, who was half Japanese and half Korean, and had a very well established and robust practice in Los Angeles. My father was an architect, who was beginning to build his career in Seoul, but he put aside his own career path when his father called on his children to join him in the US. My father and mother are firm believers of filial piety – the Confucian belief that the children must respect and care for their elders. Even at the great cost to themselves.
But I remember my childhood in Seoul vividly – growing up in a neighborhood of traditional Korean houses, called hanok, nestled on a steep hill, above the Han River. I was a tomboy and lived my childhood climbing trees, playing beside the river, and running up and down that steep hill. We lived in a neighborhood of families, who often gathered in our home to make kimchi and share meals. And when my parents were not home, it was our neighbors who invited me into their homes and fed me warm meals. My own communal and social impulse was born from these meals in the homes of neighbors.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Perhaps I have been taught by nature – the trees, the river, the hills, the four seasons, and its fauna – to go my way. They were my models growing up, by instinct. I have never been a follower but a leader, not by choice but by pure instinct. But, pursuing a path that is uncommon, against the grain, perforce brings struggle to your doors. I have been a daughter, wife, mother, sister, friend, but I have always sought to be myself, to trust the instincts that dwells in the self and to create space for art and writing that gives my self its raison d’etre. Roles are social constructs, ones that society demands that you wear in a particular manner, but the self is a nonnegotiable identity that you must face time and time again, however strange and uncomfortable such an encounter is.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an owner of a creative space – an odd statement, I think. Because it is not I who owns the space but all those who validate the space either by sharing their art within it or by partaking in the sharing. I like to say that I am the holder of this metamorphic container that changes its shape and direction according to the content that is created and shared. My art is writing, which demands tireless self reflection, and in the core of LMNL Space, as its founder, as its holder, as its caretaker, my self reflections are embedded, I suppose. And, as metamorphic my self reflection is – I am never the same twice – LMNL Space mirrors this state and condition.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
It’s important to dream and not to cast doubt on your dream, especially when it is besieged by doubts of others. The moment you do, like a fragile soap bubble, it will burst. You may believe that your dream is singularly yours but it isn’t, I have realized. Instead your dreams are born from other dreams, many of them unspoken, out of fear of failing. When the dream becomes a vivid vision, its shape no longer formless but delineated, it becomes a need, so compelling that you can’t avoid it but must heed its demands. LMNL Space LLC, in Orange, a creative space, used to be a dream but now exists in time and space as a reality – to serve the dreams of the many. So I ask that you keep dreaming and fighting for your dream that belongs to the dreamers you will one day meet and will perhaps only meet in dreams.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lmnlspacecreative.co/
- Instagram: @lmnlspacecreative.co
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LMNLSPACE
