DIANA NICHOLETTE JEON - EXPOSURE INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron was known as the "river of lost souls.” For a season of 860 days, my husband left...me, our son, our home. I felt as if I was sitting on the banks of Acheron awaiting my healing and my husband’s “return from the underworld.”

We all think we know what we would do when enmeshed in such a situation, yet the reality is that we have no idea until we are confronted by it. The experience exacts a detrimental toll on one’s sense of self, self-confidence, and emotional stability. I mourned my marriage and missed my husband while I tried to mitigate the impact on our son. Well-meaning friends told me to “file for divorce”, or to “move on and find a new guy.”

Desperately trying to find the light while riding a rollercoaster that I never got in line for, I was steeped in the palpable unknowability of a new normal that was entirely abnormal - as if a limb had been amputated. I felt utterly alone; that no one understood; that the pain would never stop. There was no beginning, middle, or end. There just was. There were times where I fought to survive, where I would say or do almost anything; times of shame; times of deep sadness, all interspersed with interludes of peace. Yet I held on tightly to my bountiful faith and my own hopes.

My experience ended with reconciliation, but faint scars remain. Consciously reliving this experience is at once both difficult and cathartic. Yet I feel that by sharing my trauma via this work, others experiencing similar grief may feel less alone in their pain, more able to endure and survive it, and ultimately, may learn–as I did–that they have more strength than they thought was possible.

BIOGRAPHY

Diana Nicholette Jeon is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Honolulu. She was awarded her BA in Studio Art at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in 2003 and her MFA in Imaging and Digital Art by the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2006. From 2004 until 2013, Jeon worked as a college instructor; she taught in the New Media Arts program at KCC; the Expanded Arts program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa; and the Non-Toxic Printmaking program at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

Jeon’s internationally-exhibited, award-winning work has been featured in Black + White Magazine UK, Lenscratch, Beta developments in Photography, Gente di Fotografia, SHOTS Magazine, Pf Magazine, The Art Photo Index, Your Daily Photo, The Huffington Post, several curated collections at Saatchi Art, and Lens Culture. Her art has received four Hawaii SFCA Purchase Awards, International Photo Awards, the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, a Pollux Award, and Mobile Photo Award, among others. Her work is held in corporate, public and private collections nationally and internationally.