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MAIA LEE INTERVIEW
2007.04.24
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Name: Maia Lee
Age: 25
Occupation: artist / chillzine editor
Current Location: Seoul, Korea
TNG: You are currently living in Seoul, but you grew up in Nepal. What was your childhood like?
ML: Well, I actually lived in Seoul until I was 3. My parents are both linguists and at that time they needed to do some fieldwork so we lived for a year in Singapore and then the next year in Papua New Guinea. After that we settled down in Nepal. My parents are also missionaries and they came to Nepal to do bible translation for one of the local languages. They actually made the first Nepali-Korean dictionary.
TNG: Were there a lot of other Koreans there?
ML: I think at that time there were 4-5 other families. We lived in Kathmandu, which is the capital and biggest city. My parents always used to say that our life in Nepal was similar to Seoul in the 50’s and 60’s. Definitely less developed.
TNG: How do you think growing up abroad has made you different from native Koreans?
ML: I went to an international school in Nepal, so I was constantly exposed to people from different backgrounds with many different experiences. In Korea, the culture is more homogeneous. I think there’s a stronger definition of the average and also more of a desire to fit in to the norm. Since I was always travelling and meeting new people, I was used to adjusting to new circumstances.
TNG: When did you come back to Seoul? Was it difficult to assimilate to Korean life after you came back?
ML: I came back around 6 years ago to study art at Hongik University. I think one of the big things I noticed when I came back was the lack of color in Seoul at that time. All the clothes were grey, black, beige, or white! The colors you see now are only a recent phenomenon. Coming from a place like Nepal, where colors are so vibrant, was difficult.
TNG: When did you first start painting/drawing? Did you always know you wanted to be an artist?
ML: I really decided that I wanted to pursue art as a career when I was a junior in high school. I remember when I came back to Korea to look at schools, people told me Hongik University was the best art school in Korea, but when I saw the school, I thought it was so small and not that impressive! But that’s just how it was back then. In Korea, there’s a big entrance test to get into college. Part of that test was drawing classical Greek statues, so I had to buy two statues and bring them back to Nepal to practice! One of them actually broke on the way back.
