In Seoul, I have two sets of friends - office friends and swing dance friends. At Christmas in 2020, some of us were meeting after not seeing one another for nearly two months because I'd gotten COVID-19 and obviously had to be in a quarantine facility. December 25th was also the birthday of my closest friend here and we were hanging out at her art studio and messing around. She made this big paper rose as a "welcome back" gift and I found it funny. "I want to hide myself!", I said, still a bit awkward and anxious after getting COVID-19. So I pretended to be funny and used the rose to cover my head.
We were all having a laugh and ended up posing with the rose in turns.
It made me think about how we’d all been covering our faces for the last year in fear of one another. If only we were all walking roses that couldn’t infect each other. The idea to make this collage came when I saw my friends taking these pictures. Dancing roses, I thought. What would a dance hall full of dancing roses look like? I chuckled and made the first collage as a joke. The swing community I’m part of liked it so much that my friend and I decided that it would be a nice idea to put it on t-shirts and sell them. We’d donate the funds to our swing dance bar which had been suffering to pay rent because of low patronage and the current situation.
In swing dancing, we always start the counting with 5— “Ah 5 - Ah 6 - Ah - 5, 6, 7 and”. After the “and” we begin our rock steps. I wanted the image to tell swing dancers that we’d soon be back to hearing this ultimate cue to begin dancing. We did end up making the t-shirt but just not with this image. This image set the base for a series of other ideas. I made designs for a t- shirt, a tote bag and a small water bottle. In the process, this first image took a back seat and we ended up using it only at the end to package our products!