Death in solitude, or Kodoksa, is a new social phenomenon in Korea’s society due to the increase in the number of one-person households and of the elderly. This is a new word that has no legal definition yet. Disconnection from family slows down discovery, and sometimes the body is left unnoticed in homes for weeks and months. Something commonly seen in these houses are piles of trash that are left uncleaned. I stumbled upon a picture of a huge trash pile blocking a very small window of a very small room. A ray of light beyond the unbreathable pile of trash – it would not have been hope, but greater despair. I extracted a color palette with paint and with dyes from the reference images. I designed a pattern, printed on hand-dyed fabric using silkscreen, and gathered the printed and found fabrics to make a quilt. I used the Korean traditional Bojagi seaming to sew them together.
