Multiverse

Multiverse is a series of 17 digital drawings that begins with the possibility of one being appearing in different forms across time and space. The black cat, a recurring presence in SHHAN’s work, is no longer a fixed character. It moves through worlds, changing in form and state.

Some cats retain familiar bodies; others flow like liquid, stretch, or twist. At times, the boundary between body and surrounding space disappears, giving way to unfamiliar forms that resemble gods or demons. Their appearances, powers, and conditions differ, yet the image of a black cat remains within them.

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The recurring liquid- and smoke-like forms are not merely background or decoration. They surround and engulf the cats, sometimes mixing with the bodies themselves to create a flow from one space into another. SHHAN imagined them as currents of space-time connecting worlds and as passages between dimensions.

A body entering that flow does not remain intact. It stretches, melts, separates, or mingles with its surroundings. Moving into another world is not simply the arrival of the same body in a different place: it is an event in which the conditions of a new world may transform the being itself.

The recurring images of falling and diving belong to the same idea. Rather than directly signifying death or disappearance, descent suggests leaving the present world and entering another dimension. Vanishing from one space may be the beginning of appearing in another.

Multiverse #12, 2022

Multiverse #9, 2022

Multiverse is not primarily asking whether other worlds exist. Its more important question is whether a being that has crossed into another world can still be called the same being.

If its body, powers, world, and experiences all change, what connects the being before and after? If appearance determines identity, each form could be a different being. But if something can continue after the body has been completely transformed, identity cannot be explained by visible form alone.

The black cat recurring across the 17 works offers a point of reference. Similar forms encourage viewers to find connections between otherwise different images. Yet the works never establish whether these are truly one being or separate beings arising in different worlds. They leave open the boundary between what makes us sense continuity and what makes us judge things to be different.

In this way, Multiverse became an early series in which SHHAN directly explored movement and transformation across states of being. At this stage, movement meant imagining passage through dimensions and space-time rather than a defined cycle of death and rebirth. Yet the question of what might persist as one state ends, another begins, and the body changes became an important starting point for later work on life, death, reincarnation, and repetition.

Change in Multiverse does not mean that the previous being disappears entirely. Even as one body falls apart and another form emerges, a connection remains that is difficult to explain.

Can a being remain itself in another world and another body? Rather than settling on a single answer, Multiverse unfolds that possibility through 17 different forms.

Multiverse was presented in The SHHAN – Multiverse at Make B Cafe in Seoul in 2022.