Dear curses, restless in bed. Snarling silence.
These are the basslines of life, black dogs growling at the edges, silk sheets curling into a quiet storm.
(Guides and observations written at the tail end of each day and night, sessions separated only by sleep, much like her paintings.)
Hold onto this folded paper and follow this dream sequence with me now (in her directness, she has created a dream.) Comfortable tensions, anxieties she has grown used to: her dear curses.
Bedside table
Alluring cherry wood and white silk sheets triple-frame a blood-stained fragment from an art history book
on ukiyo-e prints. Here the men are faithfully pictured, discussing an invasion. And so, she paints in the present tense in Glasgow, evidence
of travelled trauma, travelling into the surreal and oneiric. Take note of the sickly intimacy here. Confronted by the past on her bedside table, these things forcibly take root. A vile and vicious history deliciously and excessively framed; the wood has warm red undertones: ‘look at this paper now!’
Perhaps, the unicorn loved her
Reluctant murder and forgiveness? A tearful attack. Wooden wardrobe panel and domestic fantasy. Perhaps the abuser loved its victim. Curse- dealing, the vicious cycle. She says unicorns used to impale impure women. This painting holds most dear to the dream realm she has created.
Insomniac
Growling anxiety and disrupted slumber. Waking into a bad dream, sweating amongst the comforts of her bed. A vulnerable, poisonous tension. These paintings reinforce the value of visual drama to understand invisible curses. This is deeply personal, and so the bedroom. And in her bedroom, she suffers in silence. Violence and sensuality, bowed head and heavy thoughts. There is a fixation, a singularity here (she is ready to?). She says the bedroom is a space where emotional inheritance and bodily memory accumulate over time, fixed in the shoulders and the brow.
Bloodline
Her signature metaphor multiplied into a vicious cycle of bloodless bites. Grandmother, mother, daughter. Violently protective by nature and necessity. Subjects swathed and surrounded by cloth. A theatrical presentation of the transfer through generations of anxieties and traumas. She pays close attention to framing these things. This is about inherited emotional patterns between mothers and daughters. It is hypnotic with its combination of directness (it is all here, on the surface of things) and yet because of that, it almost has the opposite effect of an optical illusion, cropped so tightly with dizzying painted motion. Silk sheets swirling into a timeless storm. A sense of laboured time and care prevails.
In her bedroom, she wrote about paintings, sheets curled up and around, determined eyes, shifting glasses. With a restless mind, she can relate. Dear curses, I wish you would be kinder. But bitter-sweet strength resides in her bedroom. Guard dogs and white sheets.
‘being a woman feels like a curse’, she says. We giggled.
xxx
–Cora Weiss
Heeyoung Noh (b. 1995, South Korea) is an artist currently based in Glasgow. She graduated from Sungshin Women’s University in 2019 and the MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2024. She was selected for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2025. Recent exhibitions include, New Gen: The Emerging Voices, Korean Cultural Centre UK, London (2025); Submerged Attachment, The Tagli, London (2025); LAG, with LAG collective, Cosmo 40, Incheon (2024); RUB RUB RUB, Salt Space, Glasgow (2023); and DAMP, Gallery Philosophie, Seoul (2023).
Cora Weiss (b.2000) is an artist exploring image production and compilation, and their use for atmosphere construction in paint, print, photography and writing. Weiss graduated from the MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2024, and the BA in Fine Art from Newcastle University in 2022.
